


A Hell of His Own Making

by Anti_kate



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A forest full of pining, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale POV, Aziraphale is sad, BAMF Aziraphale, Blow Job, Brief Gabriel POV, Brief Hastur POV, Brief weird metaphysical angel sex, Canon compliant in a vague sort of way, Caretaking, Character Death, Crowley LOOK OUT, Crowley POV, Demon Hunters, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gabriel is the worst, God Ships It, Happy Ending, Hastur and Gabriel seek revenge, Hell or is it, Horror Elements, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Madame Tracy is actually psychic, Morons in love, No smut until the very last chapter, Oh god I’ve never tagged smut before, Physical hurt/comfort, Plot with barely any porn, Post-Apocalypse, Prophecies, Sentient Bentley, Sex, Whump, i like big plots and I cannot lie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22095511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/pseuds/Anti_kate
Summary: After the world doesn’t end, Hastur and Gabriel take revenge on Aziraphale and Crowley.“Just, answer me something, angel. You want things to stay the same. Well. If heaven suddenly called you up and said, hey Aziraphale, all is forgiven, let’s forget that time you ruined armageddon by fraternizing with a demon and possessing a human and talking the antichrist into saving the world, here’s your flaming sword, time to get back to work... what would you do?”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley
Comments: 216
Kudos: 320





	1. Chapter 1

In the beginning was the sword.

It flamed mightily, held firmly in the grip of the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, who stood with martial attention at his post, a stern and gleaming sentinel.

 _Hang on_ , Crowley thought, aware that something was very wrong, but not sure what.

But there was the angel, and this was how it was. Had been? Crowley felt strange thoughts skittering away from him, like mice from a python’s jaws.

He looked up from his position low to the ground as he slid towards those bare ankles - resisting the urge to coil around them - and lifted himself up, out of his snake form and into a new shape. The first time. Dark wings, absurdly curled red hair, piss-yellow eyes, cheekbones like knives. A funhouse mirror version of the angel he’d once been.

“I said, that one went down like a lead balloon,” he heard himself saying. Yes, that was right, that was how it had happened.

The angel turned his pale eyes towards him, and then, to Crowley’s dismay, hefted the sword in the classic manner of someone about to chop someone else’s head off.

“What have you done?” The angel’s voice was agonized.

“Just asked a few questions,” Crowley said, taking a step back. _This wasn’t - it hadn’t been like this - what the fuck was going on -_

“Demon Crawly. You have defiled the garden and the wonders of creation,” the angel said, with something like genuine horror. Glowing silver tears were trickling down his face.

“You know, I’m not sure it was quite like that-“ Crowley began, but the angel raised his voice, speaking over his protest.

“I see your true nature, corrupted one. You think to tempt me with this form, to lead me to fall. But I am as steadfast a warrior as God ever made, and you are nothing. You’re vermin, you’re foul, you’re an insult to Her perfection. So let this be your last moment polluting this place.”

Crowley just had time to think to himself that even Aziraphale would draw the line at declaiming such awful tripe like some third-rate Laurence Olivier, and then the sword flashed down and everything was searing agony.

* * *

One Thursday after the world didn’t end, the archangel Gabriel took the escalator down to earth and went running.

Heaven was an uneasy place, full of stony faced seraphim avoiding each other’s eyes in the corridors, terrified messenger angels hiding in stationery cupboards, boardrooms full of muttering archangels, while the choirs sang celestial harmonies in a way that could only be described as half-hearted.

All the thousands of years of preparations for the Great Plan had been for nothing, and the Almighty was typically but frustratingly mute on the matter.

And that traitorous damned principality had escaped punishment, and done so in the most humiliating way possible. He should have been nothing but a waft of incinerated particles in the void of space by now, but instead - according to the earthly surveillance unit - he was doing the same things he’d been doing for hundreds of years. Sitting in his dusty bookshop, going to lunch and shows and walking in the park and dispensing miracles as if he was still on the payroll.

The only real difference was that he was now openly fraternising with the demon. Just that morning, the surveillance team had handed over photos of the two of them sitting outside a cafe in Islington. In full daylight. Drinking human beverages and eating human food. At that, Gabriel had shuddered. If they were eating together, what other human habits were they indulging in?

As for The Great Plan. It was a shambles. Michael had suggested a review of operations with a view to a full restructure. Gabriel was fairly sure he could see off any challengers for his job, but it still made him uneasy, which was a new and unpleasant sensation. Michael always had been ambitious, and now perhaps she saw her first chance in millennia to get ahead.

So, he went running. He had picked up the habit during his last stint on earth, and he enjoyed the superior glow it gave him. And he knew he looked amazing in his cashmere tracksuit.

He was just getting to that point in a good run where the endorphins were starting to kick in (humanish bodies were so odd) when he saw something buzzing and disgusting lurching out of the bushes ahead of him. With savage delight he recognized the shambling form of Hastur, Duke of Hell, and manifested a very large, gleaming spear.

“Hold on hold on!” Hastur said, urgently. “We need to talk!”

“What could a despicable damnéd creature like you possibly have to say to a golden son of heaven?” Gabriel lifted the spear. This was going to be more fun than he’d had in a long time.

“Yeah yeah, I get it, we’re immortal foes, I’m a grovelling worm, you’re a glowing emissary of goodness, and you could smite me right now. Or...”Hastur took a cautious step forward, lifting his hands in the universal gesture of ‘please don’t kill me until you’ve heard what I have to say’. “We could see fit to overlook all that, just for the moment, and consider that we have common enemies.”

Gabriel let the glowing tip of the spear drift towards the ground. “Are you speaking, by any chance, of the traitor Aziraphale and the demon Crowley?”

Hastur spat into the bushes, starting a small fire. “‘Course.”

“Might I remind you that our respective organisations have declared them both out-of-bounds? Unlike, say, you?”

“Listen,” Hastur said. “Those two have apparently been ... shacked up on earth for thousands of years. They betrayed all of us. They’ve ruined everything. And Crowley killed... he killed Ligur.” For a moment, Hastur’s face contorted in what seemed like pain, but of course that was ridiculous. Demons didn’t have feelings.

“And I didn’t even get to feast on any entrails,” the demon continued after a moment, “and I was really looking forward to that. And you can’t tell me you’re happy about how it all worked out, can you? You never got to smite any one, or blow that daft trumpet, and now it’s all just back to waiting.

“What I think is, if that snivelling wet blanket of an angel and that ... that... not evil bastard Crowley can work together on the sly, why can’t we? Get our revenge and all that?”

Gabriel had the sense then to object, just in case the shrubs had ears. “We’re not much for revenge upstairs,” he said coolly, and untruthfully. Heaven loved comeuppances, and both he and Hastur knew it. Hastur, who’d once been a seraphim himself, and had been cast out as the ultimate act of revenge.

“Call it divine retribution then,” Hastur said, obligingly, which surprised Gabriel. “But either way, we need to make them pay.”

Gabriel spent a minute pretending to think, and then he finally nodded, and let the spear return to the aether. “Well, it seems you and I have more in common than I could have suspected. Tell me, what did you have in mind?”

In return, Hastur also gave a rotten, toothy smile, shuffled forward cautiously, and laid out the details of his plan.

After the demon finished speaking, Gabriel stood and looked out across the park towards the river.

“A hands-off operation,” he said, and weighed up his options. It was irregular, but so was everything that had happened in the past few weeks. “Good thinking, foul creature.”

“Just call me Hastur, will you?”

“Yeah, ok, _Hastur_.” Gabriel managed to make it sound blasphemous. “So we get the demon hunters to trap Crowley. Do we let them kill him? That sounds a bit too hands-off for me.”

“No, we get them to deliver him to us, in a secret, well, secretish location. Then, we torture him. But we can’t kill him, not ourselves, obviously,” Hastur said.

Gabriel felt an illicit thrill at the mention of torture. 

“Well, I can’t participate in, you know, the blood and gore and pain and all that... but I could probably bring myself to watch.”

“Nah, it won’t be your classical torture. We won’t have to get our hands dirty. Well, maybe a bit dirty, but not bloody. That’d be too old fashioned for that flash bastard.” Hastur rubbed his hands together and grinned with far too many teeth. “He always said the best hells were the ones people made for themselves. It’s psychology, you know, all in the mind.”

“Right, right,” said Gabriel, who didn’t have the foggiest, most angels being devoid of complex psychological processes. Those who did develop psychological processes tended not to stay angels for very long, as Lucifer could attest.

“And what about... Aziraphale?” Gabriel imagined having Aziraphale right in front of him, kneeling before him, begging for his forgiveness. He might have felt uneasy about how much he enjoyed the thought of that, except that it was good, and right, to want to see Aziraphale punished. 

Hastur let out a throaty, maggoty laugh. “Oh that’s the best bit of all.” He leaned closer to Gabriel, who managed not to flinch back, and explained the not-so-gory, but extremely unpleasant details of what he’d devised for Aziraphale.

This too seemed to involve a lot less physical pain than Gabriel’d expected, but by the time Hastur had explained his methodology, he felt happy for the first time since the failed Armageddon.

Crowley and, most importantly, Aziraphale would suffer, and he, Gabriel, would be there to witness every minute of it. All for the greater good, of course. Always for the greater good, the great ineffable plan, the triumph of Good over Evil. After all, Gabriel was an angel, how could he do anything but the right thing?

* * *

After Gabriel jogged away, Hastur spent a minute gazing into the horizon and chanting some infernal syllables that revealed Crowley’s position. Of course, Crowley was in his flat, so it was a completely pointless exercise of demonic power.

Not long after, the spark of light that showed his location began to move, and so did Hastur, until he was slouching through the Tate Modern. He spotted Crowley wandering through a gallery, and when Hastur saw he was without his angelic shadow, he made his move.

“Hullo Crowley,” he said.

Crowley turned around from examining a painting with the expression of someone who had just discovered they’ve tracked dog shit through several floors of one of Britain’s finest cultural institutions.

“Hastur. I thought I smelled something horrible. You know you’re not supposed to interfere with me,” Crowley said, mildly enough, but Hastur knew him well enough to see the menace beneath.

“Not interferin,” Hastur said innocently. “Just admiring the paintings. Wassat sposed to be then?”

Crowley glanced back at the painting. “It’s a Rothko. Why the sudden interest in modern art?”

“I got layers, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, sure. Well, it’s been just awful to catch up, I’m going now-“

“No, hold on,” Hastur said. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

Crowley gave him another disgusted look, and then walked away quickly, so Hastur shambled after. “He’s not my boyfriend, but if you try anything with him, I will find you, and I will rip out your guts then shove them back up your arse, got it?”

“Tut tut, Crowley, is that any way to talk to your old mate Hastur? I was just asking if he was still on the scene, on account of how I heard a rumour about him.”

Crowley stopped and turned back to Hastur, his face quite blank. “What the fuck are you talking about, Hastur? Spill it, before I slit your throat with my teeth.”

“Well, my contact is saying that heaven is considering making him an offer.”

“What?” Crowley didn’t move. Ah, that’s got him, Hastur thought.

“You know, divine forgiveness, that sort of thing. Get him back in the fold. Apparently, some people were impressed with how he handled himself. Maybe it was part of the plan after all. Think he could be an asset if they get him back.”

Crowley seemed to give this some thought and then dismissed Hastur with a curt wave of his hand. “What the fuck would you know, Hastur? And Aziraphale doesn’t want to go back. Even if they asked pretty please with a cherry on top.”

Hastur loomed in close as he dared. “Come on now, Crowley. You an’ me was both angels once. We know what it’s like to be cut off from the glory of Her love. If there was any way to un-fall, we’d have done it in a heartbeat. Not that we have hearts any more, eh?”

Crowley turned his head away from Hastur’s rank breath, which stank of carrion and tuna sandwiches.

“Fuck the fuck off and leave us fucking alone,” Crowley said, his voice low and snarling, and then stalked away.

Hastur didn’t follow, just stood grinning uneasily at art watchers for a while.

That was the thing about doubt. It didn’t have to be subtle to work.

* * *

In the perpetually wonderful village of Tadfield, Anathema Device, ex-professional descendant and practical occultist, and one-eleventh of a very small group of people who knew exactly how close the world had come to ending one sunny Tuesday in May, cleaned out the fireplace.

She’d been putting it off because she hadn’t wanted to confront the ashes of the only existing copy of the second volume of Agnes Nutter’s Nice and Accurate Prophecies. She’d agreed with Newt. They were better off not knowing, and not living their lives beholden to her long dead ancestress. Even if they had helped save the world.

But. It was proving harder than she’d imagined, not knowing what was coming next. She didn’t know if she and Newt should get married and move back to America. She didn’t know if she should stay in Tadfield and open a health food store. She didn’t know if she was going to die in a car crash next week, or live to be a spry 90 year old crone casting protection spells over throngs of her own descendants. She was just as blind and helpless as every other human who’d ever come before her. It was terrifying. The future loomed before her, vast and dark.

But she’d put it off long enough and this being an English summer, even with the influence of ex-Antichrist Adam Young on the region’s perfect microclimate there was every chance they’d need a fire going next week. She took the dustpan and brush and began sweeping the grate out, and then she saw it that not all the pages had been burnt.

What remained were mostly fragments, although there were a few larger pieces.

She bit her lip and rocked back on her knees, and thought for a moment. _Agnes, you devious old witch_. And then she carefully fished the scraps out of the mess until she had a small pile on the hearth.

Newt had gone back to London to see his mum for the day, which meant she had time to work in secret. Well, not in secret, exactly, but she’d already decided Newt didn’t need to know about this.

She carefully finished cleaning out the grate, then washed her hands and gathered her supplies. Some paper, glue, her little notecards, a pen and paper.

And then she settled down to see if there wasn’t perhaps one last prophecy she could resurrect from the ashes.

* * *

The days after the apocalypse-that-wasn’t had the fresh, new feel of the perfect spring morning, as if everything was glowing and youthful and covered with a sparkling dew. It reminded Aziraphale of his wonderment at Eden in those first days after Creation. He hadn’t been able to stop staring open-mouthed at the beauty of it all: the innumerable stars flung profligately across the Milky Way, the utterly ridiculous proliferation of flowers, the great murmurations of thousands of birds against the very first sunsets, the sweetness and grace of the humans singing in the golden hours of the first sunsets, the gentle susurrus of wind in the first trees, the blood-dark shine of daybreak on a serpent’s back.

It felt familiar and also wildly new.

Those first few weeks of the second age of the world, Aziraphale even let some customers buy actual books from the shop.

Even so, as the days of after began to pile up, he began to feel restless.

If he’d had time to articulate his most fervent wish in the tense hours leading up to Not The End, it would have been the everything stayed more or less the same. No. Exactly the same. His books, his flat, that delightful Korean restaurant that had just opened around the corner. The Ritz. Sushi. Dolphins. The ducks. The humans. His own self. Walks in the park and ice cream with Crowley.

And now everything was the same, more or less, except nothing was the same at all. Not the books, not the Ritz, not walks in the park, not himself, and not even Crowley. Or especially not Crowley. Ever since the world had not ended, Crowley seemed both exactly the same and different in every possible way.

He and Crowley had been studiously avoiding discussing any of it, keeping to safer topics; the stupidity of football, if any books from the 21st century were worth reading, how Boris Johnson was definitely a demon.

It felt nice, but also hollow somehow, that they should be just carrying on as if they hadn’t almost lost everything.

 _Is this it_ , Aziraphale found himself wondering, _is this all there is after the end of the world?_

As he usually did, he put those thoughts aside. He’d had a lot of practice with not thinking of things, and now he put aside the sense that he’d missed something, that he’d not done something he should have.

That night they were at Crowley’s flat, and well into their second bottle of wine. That was certainly different, being in Crowley’s rather terrifyingly gloomy modern flat, surrounded by anxious plants and strange “art” - that angel sculpture made Aziraphale feel as if his bow tie was strangling him, because he hadn’t lived six thousand years amongst humans (and centuries in Soho) without learning a few things about them. He didn’t mention it, or even look at it, of course. Crowley never mentioned it or looked at it either, and it had turned into a tense game that Aziraphale rather felt he was losing.

Crowley was unusually quiet, offering wine without comment, letting Aziraphale twitter on pointlessly about the death of figurative art in the 20th century. He hadn’t even touched any of the Vietnamese food Aziraphale had bought over, so of course Aziraphale had eaten all of the banh xeo and now he was too full.

“Of course it was all over when Daguerre perfected the silver platingprocess,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley, who usually mouned a strong defence of whatever it was Aziraphale was denouncing, made a vague noise that neither confirmed or denied that he’d been listening. He was sprawled on his dark monolith of a sofa, his half-full wineglass tipping precariously in his hand, his head turned ceiling-wise.

Aziraphale was perched on a chair that resembled some sort of demented throne, which had apparently become his spot in Crowley’s flat. It wasn’t a comfortable chair and he often considered trying to relocate to the sofa but Crowley had a way of draping himself all over it that made Aziraphale choose discomfort every time.

(Crowley was very fond of furniture that was difficult to actually use - except for his sofa, of course. He’d invented Egyptian wooden sleeping pillows, inflatable mattresses, church pews and those horrible benches they have in airports that you can’t sleep on even when you’re on hour 27 of your 42 hour journey from Brussels to Tai Pei.)

“I blame your lot entirely for the contemporary art market,” Aziraphale continued, which was the sort of comment that would usually get Crowley to start on about the inevitability of capitalism with regards to the venality of human nature, but instead the demon made a face as if Aziraphale had started reciting Hail Marys at him.

“There isn’t a ‘my lot’ and ‘your lot’ anymore,” he snapped. “And why do you always have to bring it back to that?Why do you always have to point out something horrible and pin it on me?”

“I... no, I don’t... I know there are no sides, but ... and it’s not as if I’m blaming you personally for Banksy, of course not. I was just talking,” Aziraphale was sober enough to know he’d murdered that sentence and buried its body in a field, but drunk enough not to able to stop himself.

“Talking,” Crowley said, flatly.

“Yes. Talking. Trying to have a conversation. With you. But that’s proving difficult tonight.”

Crowley said nothing, just continued staring at the ceiling, jaw set in a hard line.

“Awfully sorry that I’m bothering you,” Aziraphale finally said. “I’ll be going, then.” He made to stand from the awful chair, but Crowley put his wine glass down on the shiny and sharp looking coffee table with a harsh little crack, as if he’d only just stopped himself from smashing it, and sat up straight.

“You can stay, angel,” he said. “I just really don’t want to talk about heaven or hell or the ineffable plan or sides or any of it. Okay?”

 _You can stay_ , as if Crowley was doing him a kindness. Aziraphale made a face.

“We’ve hardly talked about any of those things at all,” he said before he could stop himself. “We’ve been acting as if none of it happened-“

“We’ve been acting? We?” Crowley’s voice was very low now. “You’re the one who’s just gone on playing shopkeeper and going to lunch and feeding the ducks as if nothing happened.”

“What else am I supposed to do? Wasn’t that the point? That we’d save the world and it would go on just the same?”

“You tell me, angel. What was the point of it all?”

“The point was ... the point was, everything! I’m rather fond of all of it, even the bothersome bits.” Like you, he didn’t say, and felt that rather settled the matter, and Crowley didn’t say anything for quite a long time, so perhaps he agreed.

Or perhaps not.

“Just, answer me something, angel. You want things to stay the same. Well. If heaven suddenly called you up and said, hey Aziraphale, all is forgiven, let’s forget that time you ruined armageddon by fraternizing with a demon and possessing a human and talking the antichrist into saving the world, here’s your flaming sword, time to get back to work... what would you do?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to reply _I’d bloody well tell them to go hang_ but the words felt heavy in his mouth.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” he said quietly, instead.

“Well, now you are thinking about it, angel. Would you... say yes... If heaven called you back?”

At that, Crowley pulled his glasses off and stared at Aziraphale, fixing him like a butterfly on a pin.

Why hadn’t he properly looked at the demon’s eyes before the apocalypse? Really looked. He’d seen them often enough, but there they were. Amber, terrifying, but also so very beautiful.

That was what Crowley was. Terrifying. Beautiful.

It was ridiculous, really, he’d even spent a whole day being Crowley, and now the sight of him made Aziraphale feel dizzy. A thought bubbled up dangerously near his lips. _No, I wouldn’t go go back to heaven. That’s not what I want at all. I choose us, our side. You._

But he couldn’t say it, because it was still too near treachery, too near the sort of thing that would scorch his wings black. How ridiculous, that after everything, he was still worried about falling.

“I don’t know,” he said instead, finally breaking his gaze away and giving a wobbly sigh. “Would you go back if hell wanted you?”

Crowley’s answer was instant. “Of course not. Never. Everyone hates being in hell. That’s the point of hell.”

“Well, exactly! It’s all right for you, you’re a demon, you’re supposed to be disobedient!”

Crowley made an inarticulate sound and if Aziraphale didn’t know better he would have thought he was wounded.

“See! There you go again. I know what I am, angel. And you don’t like it.”

“That’s not true-“

“Foul fiend, evil serpent, wicked creature, hereditary enemy...”

“Crowley... you know that’s not what I think.”

“Yeah, right,”Crowley said. Then he put his glasses back on and tipped back his whole glass of wine in one long swallow.

Aziraphale felt as though a cloud had gone across the sun. He couldn’t stop his hands worrying at his waistcoat, couldn’t stop the anxious ticking of his thoughts, couldn’t stop any of it.

“After everything we’ve been through, Crowley... You said it yourself. We’re on our own side. You’re my ... friend.”

Crowley let out a very soft hiss. “Friends, angel?”

Something inside Aziraphale lurched, which absolutely was not at all acceptable. Whatever this was, whatever had put Crowley in this mood, whatever Aziraphale had done or not done, it suddenly felt intolerable.

“Actually, I’m not at all sure about what this is, or what’s gotten into you. But I am sure that I am leaving.” With that, he carefully put his until-now forgotten wine down on the table, and walked as calmly as he could to the door. _That’s how serious I am about leaving,_ he thought. _I am not even going to drink that wine before I go._

“Angel,” he heard Crowley say, suddenly pleading and conciliatory, but Aziraphale didn’t want conciliation, he wanted to catch his breath.

“I’ll talk to you in a few days,” he said over his shoulder, and then he walked out into the night, alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These were just scraps, they didn’t necessarily mean anything, heaven and hell had promised to leave them alone. And Crowley was almost certainly fine, he was probably just watching a terrible action movie, or interfering with the ticket machines at the tube, or napping, or whatever else it was he did when he wasn’t here. With Aziraphale. Being together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Narumikaiko for Beta-ing and for making this so much better.

The vast boat was obscured by the steady curtains of rain. The water was already halfway up the valley, and the village of the nephilim had been there, hadn’t it? Crowley found himself struggling through the mud towards the boat. _It wasn’t right, how could anyone justify this,_ he thought desperately.

There was an angel guarding the gangplank to the boat, clad in the purest white garments that shone even through the constant, endless rain. He watched the men loading the boat passively.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley was almost yelling to be heard over the constant downbeat of the deluge. “You can’t do this! They’re all going to drown! They don’t all deserve that! Not the kids!”

The angel raised his hands, palms out. _Stay away_. The sword was by his side, Crowley saw with something like fear. No, it was fear. He was afraid of Aziraphale. He’d never been afraid of Aziraphale. It had been 6000 years and he’d never felt this sickening clutch of terror.

_What the fuck was going on? It wasn’t like this._

“Begone, snake,” the angel said sternly.

“Come on, angel, you can’t mean that you’re really going to let that Noah wanker fill up the boat with zebras and naked mole rats and drown all those children?” Crowley stepped closer now.

The angel’s expression barely shifted. “It’s part of the plan, Crawly. I don’t have a say in it.”

“Of course you have a say in it. You could tell them to dump the unicorns and the griffins and, I don’t know, the white rhinoceroses, they must weigh a couple of tonnes each? If you did that you’d have room to let those people aboard!” Crowley waved his arm to where Noah’s sons were grimly waving spears at a bunch of terrified women and children.

“Crawly.” The angel frowned. “Leave this place.”

“Angel,” Crowley said, reaching out to touch his arm.

“I warned you, demon. You’re not fit to lay a hand on me.” The angel flared like a shooting star, and the next thing Crowley knew he was plunged face down into a muddy depression, and his lungs were full of water and muck, and there was a terrible rending inside his chest, but even then he thought, _no no no, this isn’t right, it wasn’t like that..._

* * *

The offices of Pellinore Associates Ltd were housed in a shiny modern office block that reminded Gabriel of the vast glass edifices of heaven. It was a blank reflective building that could have belonged to any number of stock brokers or insurance agencies or various other blandly named companies full of serious looking people in nice suits. Gabriel liked it. He liked how clean and sharp it was, how brightly lit.

The only thing he didn’t like was the fact that the place had an odd smell, a hint of something scorched layered beneath a lot of windex.

He sat at the company’s gleaming boardroom table with his hands steepled in front of him. He could see the Pellinore logo, which included an ancient warding sigil against demonic activity, inscribed on every surface in the office.

Hastur had said the agents of Hell kept an eye on the company as a result of several “permanent discorporations” demons had suffered at the hands of Pellinore operatives, and he liked that too. Permanent discorporation was a very pleasing phrase.

The glass door opened and four smartly dressed humans filed in. Gabriel wasn’t sure what they were all for, but humans had their funny little ways.

“Mr Gabriel, how kind of you to join us,” said the first human. “We understand that you have some information for us regarding a new business development opportunity. But before we get too granular here, my colleague has a quick presentation about our services, if you’d care to watch it?”

Gabriel’s smile became a little more fixed. PowerPoint had been invented downstairs.

“I appreciate the offer, but your company came highly recommended, so I’d rather cut to the chase,” he said quickly.

Four gleaming identical white smiles met this request.

Gabriel had come with his own briefcase, from which he produced a folder, and from the folder he withdrew a 4x5 photograph of a man with dark sunglasses and questionable taste in clothes.

He flipped a few more prints onto the table. The man, clad all in black, getting into a vintage car. Sitting on a park bench engrossed in his mobile phone. Strolling with a second person, a white haired man in a crumpled dusty coloured overcoat and a bow tie. The two men together again, eating ice cream. And again, walking into a theatre. And again, the white-haired man opening a door for the the demon.

_Sickening_ , Gabriel thought sourly.

“And this Target A is definitely demonic?” One of the humans tapped Crowley in the ice cream photo.

“Indeed. I’ve prepared an extensive dossier on his nature, abilities, aliases, history and so on,” Gabriel produced a stack of papers and passed it to the nearest human.

Four identical nods, then the sounds of humans reading agonizingly slowly. Shuffling paper, coughs, squeaking chairs. Gabriel marshalled his patience. For such short-lived beings, humans were very slow about things.

“What you’re asking... it’s an unusual strategy,” one of the humans said eventually. “We usually destroy the targets upon acquisition. We find it’s generally safer and presents fewer opportunities for collateral.” 

The Great Plan had created plenty of collateral in the past six millennia and Gabriel really didn’t care, but he knew a request for a little deal sweetening when he heard one. “I understand it’s not SOP. But I’m willing to pay extra. Double the usual rate.”

Another human pointed to a line in the dossier. “Containment for the entity in a non-Pellinore facility will be ... very expensive.”

“Make it triple the usual rate,” Gabriel said airily. “And then an additional bonus of 20% for Target B.”

The first human spoke after rifling back a few pages. “This Target B. We do have questions about this ... entity. He doesn’t appear in any of our records, and we cross referenced even the most obscure demonological texts.”

Gabriel had known this was coming. “I’ll make it five times the standard rate if you don’t ask any more questions. I can assure you all that Target B won’t be any trouble.”

One of the other humans said uneasily, “but if he’s not a demon-“

Gabriel lifted a hand and commanded instant silence. “He is not. He’s under a different jurisdiction, which I personally represent. So, you needn’t worry about repercussions from any authorities. No one cares about him. No one at all.”

* * *

Aziraphale had, he thought, perfected the art of not caring where Crowley was, or what he was doing. He was good at keeping himself occupied with the shop and hunting down misprint bibles and going to small restaurants and eating alone.

He’d been doing it for centuries, but it seemed as though that muscle had atrophied in the weeks since the world hadn’t ended.

That morning he’d made a cup of tea, spent some time repairing a particularly battered first edition of Paradise Lost, made another cup of tea, opened the bookshop from precisely 9.17am until 11.04am, then made himself yet another cup of tea in the deliberate way of someone making tea not because they want tea but because it was something to do.

He read the same page of his book over and over again. He fired up his elderly computer and looked up a book fair that was happening the next week in Swindon and decided he should definitely attend. He distractedly ate a wedge of very nice cheese on some crackers for lunch, then attacked his book once again.

It had been three days since he’d seen Crowley.

After even less success reading the book this time around, he pulled his new mobile phone out of his pocket. Crowley had given Aziraphale the phone the day after the world hadn’t ended, to make his life easier, he said, although Aziraphale suspected Crowley also thought it would be amusing to see him struggle with the technology. He’d ignored it for the most part, because Crowley had been so very present lately, he hadn’t needed to contact him. He’d just been there. It had been lovely.

There were no messages. There hadn’t been, for three days.

Crowley had told him no one actually used phones to call people anymore and advised him to always text, so he scrolled through to Crowley’s number, and spent a good twenty minutes typing a message and then deleting it, over and over. He didn’t have to text Crowley, he hadn’t been the one being so strange.

He frowned a little, thinking about their fight, some proud part of him wanting to not be the one to crumble first. But he was the angel, wasn’t he, and wasn’t forgiveness part of the job? And that word reminded him of memories that he didn’t like, so he decided to reframe it not as forgiveness but as concern.

He was concerned. He didn’t want this silence to linger. No, it wouldn’t do to have a repeat of the 19th century.

_My dear Crowley, I hope you are keeping well. Would you care to join me for lunch this week? We haven’t been to that lovely little Italian place in Kensington in so long. Kind regards, your friend, Aziraphale._

He finally pressed the send button.

There was an agonizing wait, so long he was beginning to consider re-alphabetising the theology section, and then his phone gave a little ding.

_dont sign txts i know its u_

There was a moment and then another little ding.

_yes to lunch_

It wasn’t an apology. But it would have to do.

_Superb. Does Friday suit?_

There was another long wait and then reply came in a series of tiny pictures. Demon face, thumbs up.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Aziraphale muttered.

He was about to compose yet another message, when he heard a knocking at the shop door. He hurried to answer it, and began speaking as he opened it.

“Crowley, why were you making me wrestle this ridiculous device if you were right outside-”

It wasn’t Crowley. It was, in fact, the woman Crowley had hit with his car all those weeks before, the one who’d left Agnes Nutter’s prophecies behind, the one who’d popped up again at the airfield, and she was holding a bottle of wine in one hand.

“Hello Mr Fell,” she said brightly. “You remember me, don’t you? I can see your shop is closed, but I was wondering if I might come in?”

Aziraphale battled through his disappointment. “Of course, Miss Device. What a pleasant surprise. How is your bicycle? Er, how did you find me?”

“Water divination spell, and it showed me the name of your bookshop,” she said, walking in and gazing around with the sort of look on her face Aziraphale knew would lead to an attempt to buy something.

“I’ve got something, and I think it’s for you.” She was drifting very close to the occult books, which Aziraphale suspected she would like far too much, so he steered her gently into the back room.

It took a few minutes for Aziraphale to locate two clean glasses and a bottle opener, open the wine (an Argentinian red, passable at best, improved by a little frivolous miracle) and pour them both a glass. By the time he sat down at the cluttered little table, Anathema had cleared a space and laid out two pieces of paper.

They appeared to be ordinary sheets of white paper on which a child had attempted a sooty ransom note.

“This is what’s left of Agnes’ last book of prophecy,” she said, without further preamble. “I burnt it.”

At that Aziraphale looked at the scraps, and felt sick.

“She had another book?” he said, faintly. “And you destroyed it?”

Anathema nodded. She was still smiling, but this smile was cool. “You must think I’m some sort of vandal.”

Some sort of vandal - a despicable, book destroying barbarian of the worst sort!

“Why would you burn it?”Aziraphale said, hopelessly.

“It was the only way I could be free of it,” she replied, simply.

Aziraphale steadied himself. Book destruction went against every fibre of his being. Not to mention the fact that this book had been something much more.

But then, if book destruction went against his nature, so did defying heaven and consorting with demons.

The girl wanted something. He took a deep, steadying breath.

“I don’t approve of book burning.”

“I‘m not looking for approval,” Anathema said, but she sounded resigned, not angry. “After I burnt it, I was cleaning the fireplace, and I found some scraps that had survived. And Agnes moved in mysterious ways, and ... well, old habits die hard. And then when I read them, I was sure it was about you, and your friend. Because you’re an angel and he’s a demon.”

They sat looking at each other for a moment, Anathema’s face a gentle challenge.

“So you picked up on that,” he finally replied. Usually, this sort of disclosure to a human was strictly discouraged under heaven’s laws - outside a few specific burning bush-type situations - but what did Aziraphale really have to lose by breaking a few more rules.

“It was kind of obvious at the airfield,” she said.

“We usually try not to be so noticeable.”

Anathema laughed at that, and then pushed the paper towards him.

“Look. These scraps, I don’t even know whether they’re related. There’s not enough information. They might be. And the fact that I found them all together... with the bit about you, it seemed like a sign, yeah? But it’s a mess. I almost didn’t want to show you, because it’s so unclear. But Agnes told me I should help you. So here I am, being helpful.”

Aziraphale looked at the witch. She seemed terribly young, dabbling in things far beyond her understanding. And yet here she was, offering her help to him.

He took the paper and began to read.

**...thenne in the days after The Ending Which Didst Not Ende, I see an Angell and a Demon twixt paradise and perdition, but belonging to neither, and yowe sharl go to the Angell of the Books and be of somme small helpe to him Anathema.**

**thee serpent sharl be trapped in a helle of his owne creation, not within the plane of the damned, but on this ear**

**trust not the Angell of the trumpet, do that whych you must**

**eek she who heareth the voices of the departed, for she**

**his name is beloved, and he will not be dead. Yowe will be taken to him! So be ye not afraide!**

And that was it.

Beside those scraps, Anathema had scribbled some notes.

_Angel and demon? From the airfield? Belonging to neither heaven or hell must mean they’re exiled somehow?And what is a hell of his own creation? The internet? A dungeon? Not within the plane of the damned. So a hell that isn’t in hell, perhaps? That could be anywhere? Don’t be afraid? Me or someone else? Who is this for AGNES? Trust not the angel with the trumpet - biblical angels with trumpet ?! And who is she who hears the voices of the departed? A spiritualist? An archivist? A madwoman? And what’s all this got to do with ears? And who is beloved?_

Aziraphale looked at the paper and then at the witch. He felt cold now, and the shadows in the room seemed thicker and darker.

_The serpent shall be in hell,_ he thought with dread. _Crowley._

“These fragments are all a bit doom and gloom, obviously,” Anathema was saying, but he barely heard her.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, that feeling of terror clutching at him like claws in his throat. He stepped into the front room and took out his phone, swiping to Crowley’s number with trembling hands.

It rang, and rang, and rang. Finally, Aziraphale thought Crowley had answered, but it was just the voicemail message.

“This is Crowley. You know what to do, now do it with style.”

“Crowley? Please call me. Or text me. Or come to the shop. As soon as you get this message. I know actual phone calls are terribly outre, but you know me, I’m always fifty years out of date.”

He tried again.

“Honestly! What the point of having these mobile phone things about your person at all times if you’re not going to answer!”

He hung up, paused for a moment, then pressed the green icon for third time. “Ah yes, me again,” he said into the silence. “I suppose I’m sounding a bit foolish. I often do. My dear... I’m worried. Please call me back.”

He went back into the bookshop’s dusty antechamber, where the woman greeted him solemnly.

“Is everything ok?”

“I don’t know. My friend, Crowley - whose demonic nature you so astutely noted- is not answering his phone,” he said truthfully. “Thank you for bringing this to me, vague as it is.”

“That’s Agnes for you. Always right, never clear.” She held up the bottle and poured him another glass. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful in analyzing the prophecy. But you’re an angel, don’t you have a direct line upstairs?”

Aziraphale hesitated. “I do not. Not anymore.”

He wanted her to leave so he could try to call Crowley again, but he couldn’t bring himself to shoo her away like a stray cat, so he accepted the glass of wine and took a deep drink. His hands were trembling as he put the glass back on the table.

She was looking at him with those clever eyes.

“We’re... free agents now,” he said.

“Ah,” she said. “I wondered how it all worked, the two of you, being together.”

“Together?” Aziraphale frowned, his mind still going over the scraps the girl had rescued from the fire. _Trapped in a hell of his own creation._ What did it mean?

“Ye-es,” she said. “Together. An an angel and a demon. It’s the ultimate Romeo and Juliet.”

“Sorry?” Aziraphale said, realising what she’d actually meant.

“Being in love with ... your complete opposite. Your enemy.”

“That’s not how it is.”

Anathema was staring at him now. “His name is beloved? Agnes is never wrong.”

He put the glass down and clutched his hands together. No. These were just scraps, they didn’t necessarily mean anything, heaven and hell had promised to leave them alone. And Crowley was almost certainly fine, he was probably just watching a terrible action movie, or interfering with the ticket machines at the tube, or napping, or whatever else it was he did when he wasn’t here. With Aziraphale. Being together.

“We’re not what you think. We had an Arrangement, and yes, we’ve become friends... and I do care for him of course, but it’s not a...” his voice trailed off.

Anathema raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Sorry. But. Really?“

Aziraphale opened his mouth to say something else. _Oh I’m terribly fond of the dear boy. He’s my ..._ and then he couldn’t think of what to say.

The things he had been refusing to look at for so long crowded around him.

_His name is beloved_.

He loved Crowley. He knew he did. And not just the way he loved humans, or the world. He’d known for so long, but even after the world hadn’t ended it seemed best to leave it alone. Out of equal parts habit and fear. He hadn’t wanted to ruin anything. He hadn’t known, for sure, that Crowley wanted the same human things. He had been scared.

He thought of Crowley on the bus, Crowley in the Bentley offering to drive him anywhere. At the bandstand, begging him to run away to Alpha Centauri. He thought of Crowley in the church, wincing with each step on consecrated ground. Memory after memory. When he’d rescued him from the prison in the French Revolution. When they’d met on the eve of the battle of Agincourt, and Crowley had suggested they piss off down the pub and let the humans sort themselves out. Crowley drunk one night in an abandoned cantina in a town somewhere in rural Spain after the Inquisition had been through, utterly silent, ignoring Aziraphale’s attempts to engage him in any conversation. Or right before the flood, the way he’d looked when he’d found out the children were to be drowned. And then back at the very beginning, the way he’d edged under Aziraphale’s wing as the storm clouds broke overhead.

He thought of Crowley’s long elegant hands, and imagined what that hand might feel like under his own. Or running through his hair. Or tracing over the shape of his mouth?

_Oh you stupid angel,_ he imagined Crowley saying.

He took his phone out again. Still no messages.

“Look, I’m sorry the prophecy was such a meagre offering,” Anathema was saying, and she reached out and took his hand, surprising him again. “But as Agnes says, be not afraid.”

And then she went off to catch the evening train back to Tadfield.

Aziraphale sat in the back room as shadows gathered long around him. No missed calls, no messages, nothing. _Crowley, stop ignoring me_ he typed, then deleted immediately.

Resolutely, he put his phone back in his pocket. It wasn’t like he expected Crowley to always be at his beck and call. Just because he always had been.

He’d be lurking around the shop again soon enough, or he’d pop up at lunch, and then Aziraphale could say the things he should have said before.

* * *

The slick-suited Pellinore executives weren’t the real demon hunters - they just took care of the paperwork and the financials.

The actual demon hunters were, in this case, two sub-contractors. One was a tall, lean man with a dark beard and close-cropped black hair. He enjoyed rock climbing, green smoothies and exorcisms. The other was a compact but muscular woman with a severe auburn bob. She had personally killed seven demons, which was Pellinore’s record.

They called each other Smith and Jones. Jones was sitting in a nondescript but zippy Peugeot outside a small but exclusive block of flats in Mayfair. Smith was installed by the window in a coffee shop opposite the building. They had been observing the entity they called Target A for several days now, which had, for the most part, meant watching it appear late and do very little.

Target A appeared not long after midday, sinuously made its way to a black vintage car lurking conspicuously beneath a “no parking” sign, and took off at a screaming pace through the crowded streets of London.

Jones threw the car into gear and squealed out after the Bentley. She was a trained rally driver but by the time the Bentley literally screeched to a halt under another no parking sign just outside Kew Gardens her face was white with strain and her eyes were stinging with sweat.

She steadied herself and trained her binoculars on the infernal target, now casually making its way into the gardens. She noted it didn’t buy a ticket, just walked through the gates with a wave of its hand.

It was an odd place for a demon to visit. In Jones’s experience, they preferred non-consecrated cemeteries, the waiting rooms of any government offices, hospital admission areas, as well as the more traditional charnel houses. Anywhere misery seemed concentrated and refined. Perhaps there was an ancient pre-Roman burial ground or sacrificial altar concealed within the gardens? Not that it mattered. Her job was to capture the demon and transport it to the holding location, not to puzzle out its motives.

She followed the demon and watched from a discreet distance as it strolled aimlessly, seemingly deep in thought. Occasionally it would stop and take a closer look at a plant, or pull its phone out and look at it.

After about 20 minutes of this, Jones spoke into the discrete mouthpiece of her communication device.

“Smith, I think we’ll be here for a while. Time to set the trap.”

* * *

Crowley went for a walk, by himself. He chose Kew Gardens because it wasn’t St James, and he didn’t want to accidentally wander into a certain second hand bookshop. He’d been stewing for days, and he wasn’t quite ready, just yet, to stop.

Crowley would never have admitted to anyone, especially Aziraphale, that adjusting to the way things were now was proving difficult. He was suddenly, terrifyingly free and everything had changed. Except it hadn’t. Not really.

Before the Not-end, he’d become adept at devising torments for humans that technically fulfilled the demented visions of hell but also, importantly, didn’t actually really hurt anyone. He hadn’t wanted the job, but he’d done it. And he supposed the tormenting and tempting had been fun, in that desperate way that humans often seemed to have fun, which meant it hadn’t been much fun at all. But it had mainly been something to fill the time in between time spent with Aziraphale, or rescuing Aziraphale, or devising ways to irritate Aziraphale while the angel tried to read one of his precious old books.

_You like books? Come, read me. Drink in my words, run your hands down my spine, lick your finger and turn my pages, don’t stop until you’ve ended me, utterly._

And now? Now he was still doing what he’d done for millennia, which was circling around Aziraphale, like a ship spiralling faster and faster around Charybdis, or a doomed star orbiting around a black hole.

Except exactly nothing like that, he thought sourly, looking at his phone to see if the angel had messaged him, which of course he hadn’t.

Crowley put his phone away. What was wrong with him? He didn’t have to follow the angel around like a little dog on a lead.

He stalked through the Rock Garden, almost oblivious to the extraordinary beauty of the plants exploding into life around him. He looked instead at the humans around him, many in pairs, holding hands, swaying along together and smiling and laughing as if their mayfly lives weren’t the most precarious things in the universe.

Two young men were kissing enthusiastically by the agave and Crowley scowled at them.

_You lot nearly lost all this, and you don’t even know._

He stood for a while watching water run over rocks and thought about how easy the humans made it seem, tumbling into each other. And about how easy it had been the times he’d tried it on with various people. A casually-draped arm along the back of a chair. A whisper in an ear, a skim of fingertips along a forearm, a knowing smile, and whoever it was had usually fallen over themselves to indulge in an earthly delight.

He’d tried a few of those moves on the angel over the years. The lingering gazes, the accidental hand brushing, the invitation to stay a little longer with one of those meaningful looks. Mostly it had sailed over the angel’s head, or he’d been deliberately obtuse. It was hard to tell the difference. _Crowley, I’m trying to read. Oh honestly, my dear, why are you being so odd. Of course I’ll have one more drink, but then I have to go._

Of course, there’d been times when he’d seen Aziraphale turn his head away too fast, seen his face go hot and pink, seen his eyes flick to Crowley’s mouth.

And he’d never pushed it, because Crowley knew what happened to seduced angels. They Fell.

Or rather, he’d assumed that’s what happened. There weren’t really any prior examples. Angels consorting with humans had been quite the to-do right before the flood, and the byproduct, all those nephilim - the poor bloody sods - had perished in the waters. But apparently that was more of a regrettable mistake than a falling offence, because none of those angels had ended up in hell.

But demons were different, right? Of course they were. Most demons were disgusting, and while there were plenty of humans who didn’t seem put off by putrescence or insect infestations, angels were notoriously obsessed with purity and cleanliness. And, well, demons were demons. They were cast out and rejected and fallen, and angels were not. The very thought of an angel loving a demon was ludicrous. There wasn’t a rule against it because it was too absurd to contemplate.

So Crowley hadn’t known, not with certainty, that an angel who was seduced by a demon would end up as just another demon. But it seemed likely. Or it had, for six thousand years.

But things were different now.

And Aziraphale hadn’t fallen after he’d confronted heaven. _He hadn’t fallen._

And after that, Crowley had thought, surely they both wanted the same thing. He’d thought about all sorts of ways it could go. He’d thought about leaning over the table at the Ritz and grabbing the angel by his lapels and kissing him senseless. He thought about pushing him up against the door of the bookshop as it closed behind them and finally pulling off that bow tie and undoing his buttons, and biting his way down the curve of his stomach. He thought about sitting on a picnic mat and taking the angel’s wrist and learning the map of his veins with his tongue. And then extending that knowledge to every part of Aziraphale’s body.

Instead, what had happened was... nothing. Lunch then drinks then the angel had made his _it’s time for you to go_ face and that had been it, for weeks and weeks. There’d been visits to the theatre and ice cream and plenty of wine and bickering.

Everything had changed, but Aziraphale apparently had not. He was still completely oblivious to anything beyond his own personal holy trinity of lunch, books, and long walks. _You go too fast for me, Crowley._

And he hadn’t even bothered to deny it when Crowley had asked ifhe’d considered going back to heaven.

Maybe he still truly believed in the great plan, the light of heaven, whatever that was. Maybe being cut off was too much.

If he’d seen what Crowley had seen, the day they’d switched bodies, he wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get back in their good books, Crowley thought darkly.

Fucking hell, he was being a right mopey bastard today. He’d been a right mopey bastard since Hastur had cornered him in the Tate. He knew the other demon was almost certainly full of shit. But that didn’t mean he was wrong.

He had wandered absent-mindedly into one of the elegant greenhouses devoted to exotic plants, and now he stood eyeing an echinopsis that was on the verge of an extravagant flowering. He reached down and touched its stubby little leaves, and it suddenly burst into mass of delicate flowers.

He looked up from contemplating the plant and saw a woman with auburn hair watching him, and felt a prickle of unease right where his wings were folded flat and invisible between his shoulder blades.

She wasn’t a demon, but there was something predatory about the way she looked at him, her gaze flat and direct.

His phone vibrated in his jacket pocket, and in the time it took him to look down and back up again, the woman was gone.

He was just rattled because he’d seen Hastur, he thought, turning his attention to the phone screen. It was Aziraphale, and Crowley felt the familiar kick of pleasure at the sight of his name. Human bodies and their animalistic hormonal systems, all those endorphins and oxytocin and dopamine. How any of them got anything done at all was a complete mystery.

Lunch. On Friday. He smiled then, despite himself, and he sent back something glib but affirmative.

He decided to go back to the flat and watch TV and maybe - definitely - he’d go to Aziraphale’s later with a bottle of wine or seven and attempt to crawl back into his graces once again.

If this was all he ever had, it would have to be enough.

Afterwards, when he had time to think he’d wonder how he’d been so oblivious. _Love hath made thee a tame snake._ Whatever it was, he didn’t notice until it was too late.

As he walked into the grey-walled hallway of his flat he noticed, vaguely, an odd smell. Was it frankincense? His phone rang and just as he stepped into the centre of the room and raised it to his ear something smashed into the back of his head.

He rolled away from the hit and was on his feet again, but there was another stunning crack of light and noise around him, and that smell in his nose was suddenly chokingly thick. He was on his knees and blinking away afterimages when he saw the man standing in his kitchen doorway, something like a gun in his hands, was that a fucking taser? He made to lunge for him, baring his teeth, but he was wrapped in a crackle of terrible electricity. He howled furiously, extending his wings. But something else was now wrapped around him and pulled him down, his arms and wings pinned against his body, his glasses fallen to the floor.

He hissed with rage, trying to change into a snake or even a rain of maggots or something, but he was trapped. He writhed and arched and kicked but every move seemed to tighten the bonds.

“I wouldn’t struggle too much if I were you.” It was the man from the doorway, a vague dark shape against his floor-to-ceiling windows. He reached for Crowley and slapped something over his mouth. Crowley snapped and tried to bite him with dripping fangs, but the man was faster and his mouth was sealed shut. Duct tape. “Used a dog catching lasso of my own invention. It’s the rope, you see, it’s been woven with every strand thrice-blessed, so it tightens every time you move. If you don’t fancy being completely sawn to bits, I’d suggest you lie still.”

Crowley swore against the duct tape but only muffled grunts came out. He could feel the ropes biting into his back, his arms, hips, thighs, and stopped thrashing. He tried all his usual demonic tricks, but he was trapped. Very very trapped. Fuck fuck fuck.

And if they’d come for him, they’d be coming for Aziraphale too. He had to get free, he had to do something, and he arched against the restraints, trying to reach for a miracle.

The man, a blur above him, gave a humourless laugh. “None of your powers will work- that’s pontifical incense, best money can buy. And now, I’m going to give you a little shot. Homeopathic holy water, it’ll put you right out like a light.”

If Crowley had been free, he might have spat out something about how homeopathy was a giant scam, he should know because he’d invented it, but all he could do was hiss as the needle pierced his skin, and everything went dark.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale searches for Crowley, and Crowley faces his worst fears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re in it now, lads.  
> Content warning for more violence, physical threats, body horror, and that Aziraphale is very sad.  
> Thanks again to NarumiKaiku for betaing and for all the encouragement.

He was walking through a desert, under a dusky twilight, and he heard someone calling his name.

“Crawly!”

He turned, and there was the angel. He stepped back, warily, the fear now a living thing in his chest.  _ No, this isn’t how it was. I am not afraid of him. He’s my other half. _

“You did it then?” Crowley asked.

The angel was standing in the middle of the barren road, his robes dusty and his face ashen and sick. “Crawly,” he said, his voice breaking. “It was awful. The whole city. Even his wife... they made me turn her into a pillar of salt. Just because she looked back.”

Crowley stepped closer and laid a hand cautiously on the angel’s arm. 

“I’m sorry.”

There was a moment where the only sound was the wind. 

“You know, before we met,” the angel said, staring off into the darkening east. “I never doubted.”

“I know.” Crowley left his hand where it was, enjoying the rare moment of contact. The angel would pull away, soon enough. 

“I wonder then. Are you the reason?” 

“No,” Crowley said. “You’re doubting because it’s nonsense. You know it is.”

Aziraphale shut his eyes, his face etched with sorrow. Crowley wanted to stroke his brow, kiss away the tension in every line of his face, pull him down into the dirt and make him forget his sadness, just for a few moments.  _ I am yours _ , he wanted to say, just like he wanted to say every time they met. _ However you want me, I am yours. _

And at the same time he wanted to run, to fly, to get as far away from the angel as he could. 

Aziraphale turned his eyes, now the dark grey of a clouded sky, towards Crowley. His gaze was heavy.

“Isn’t it rather what your side does- tempt, sow doubt, turn the faithful away from the light of heaven?” He reached up and put a hand on Crowley’s neck, and pulled him in closer, so their foreheads were touching. It was a strange embrace. Crowley forgot, sometimes, how strong Aziraphale was. He couldn’t have moved if he wanted to, the angel’s grip on him was implacable.

“Well, yeah, but not _ you _ ,” Crowley protested weakly. “Never you.”

And then Aziraphale pushed him away, roughly, so he stumbled back. 

And there was the sword again in the angel’s hand, a bright searing line in the dark.  _ Not again _ .

“You would say that. But I know you’re a liar. A treacherous beast.” The angel’s face was resolute now, all the doubt and pain gone, nothing but awful certainty. “I’ll give you to the count of five.”

“What? Angel, come on, I’m not your enemy-“ 

“One.”

“You know it’s not like that with us,” Crowley stepped back anyway.

“Two.”

“Angel.”

“Three.”

“Fine. But I’m not running.” Crowley gritted his teeth and strode off into the desert. It barely came as a surprise - although it still really, really hurt - when the the sword struck him in the back.

* * *

Crowley didn’t come to lunch.

Aziraphale sat in the Italian restaurant and drank sparkling water and ate bread until the waitstaff were sick of the sight of him. He tried Crowley’s number again and again. 

Something hard and dense settled in his chest. It felt like the world was going to end. 

He tipped voluminously and left the restaurant, going back to his bookshop where he fluttered about the dusty shelves, reordering areas that had been jumbled by customers, opening and closing a few volumes he’d not visited recently, trying to distract himself.

Crowley was impossible to get rid of. Aziraphale had tried, many times. He  _ always _ popped back up. And he  _ never _ missed lunch. 

_ Always. Never.  _

Such solid, comforting words.  _ He’ll be here tomorrow, _ Aziraphale reassured himself.

Without sleep, he had a long span to fill in between “now” and “tomorrow”. He was still full from lunch, so he didn’t bother with dinner, just a whole lot of tea. No wine, he’d save that for when Crowley came back. He tried not to check his phone obsessively but that didn’t work, and when he found himself dusting at 3am he gave it up as a bad job and went upstairs. It wasn’t much of a flat, just a couple of rooms that were only different from the bookshop by dint of not being directly located within it, but it was home. 

He paced around for a little while. He sat on one chair. He sat on another. He even watched some TV, in the sense that he turned the tiny box on and stared at it, but he had no idea afterward what had been on.

When the sun was far enough up to qualify it as morning rather than dawn, he left the bookshop and walked down to St James Gardens. Crowley wasn’t there. He went to the Tate Modern, which he knew the demon enjoyed, especially when he miracled up fake art to watch people being confused about whether it was a dustbin or a sculpture. 

Crowley wasn’t there. 

He went to a couple of bars, the sort of place where bearded men made expensive fancy drinks and then served them in jam jars. Crowley wasn’t in any of them. He went back to the bookshop, where Crowley most definitely wasn’t. He called his number a few more times and sent another text.

_ I’m quite cross with you now, Crowley.  _

Another long night loomed then faded into day. 

Aziraphale changed out of one set of rumpled clothes and into a less rumpled set, opened the shop very briefly, and spent most of the morning staring at nothing.

Finally at about 3pm he made a decision, and walked the relatively short distance between Soho and Mayfair at somewhere between an anxious clip and a reluctant jog. When he arrived at Crowley’s block of flats, he saw the Bentley parked at an erratic angle in its usual non-parking zone, and he felt a vast wave of relief. And then anger. Crowley must be home. But if Crowley was home, why hadn’t he returned his calls?

He walked up to the lobby door, straightened his bowtie and coat, smoothed his hands over his waistcoat, and pressed the buzzer. He mentally prepared a little speech about how  _ some _ people might be more considerate of  _ other _ people’s feelings, it had been days, what did Crowley think he was playing at, and did he even realise how worried Aziraphale had been and also,  _ don’t ever go away again, I can’t bear it, please _ . He pressed the buzzer again.

After a few minutes of buzzing fruitlessly and pacing a few steps in a circle by the door he opened the door of the lobby with a small miracle. 

The front door of Crowley’s flat was already very slightly ajar, which was very much not a good sign.

“Crowley,” he called, opening the door all the way, trying for a casual tone and failing. “It’s me.” Even as he spoke he knew the flat was empty. He walked in anyway. There was a strangely familiar but out-of-place smell in the air. Frankincense, he thought. But why would Crowley’s home smell of frankincense?

The flat seemed as unlived in as ever, all dark concrete and dim lighting. The kitchen was pristine, granite and stainless steel, glossy dark cabinets unsullied by anything so messy as fingerprints. The bathroom gleamed. Had Crowley ever showered here, or did he just miracle himself into permanent cleanliness? Thinking about Crowley in the shower was not something Aziraphale allowed himself, so he shut the door rather quickly.

He even went into the bedroom which felt rather like venturing into forbidden territory, and sat on the bed just for the momentary pleasure of leaving it rumpled, because Crowley hated things being rumpled.

Finally he opened the door of the built-in wardrobe. It was filled with a row of dark clothes, which surprised him, because he thought Crowley had always manifested his clothing. He didn’t go through the clothes, although his fingers itched to run over collars and down sleeves in a way he’d never dare when the clothes were on their wearer.

He went into the next room, which was full of plants, straining out of the darkness towards the window. 

“Do you know where he is, then?” he asked them aloud, and of course they didn’t respond. He gave a hollow little laugh. He saw a green spray bottle by the window and gave them all a light misting of water, as it seemed like the right thing to do. 

He walked back into the living room, and that’s when he saw the dark glasses on the coffee table. And noticed the rug on the floor was ever so slightly askew. Crowley didn’t like things being askew, and he never went anywhere without his glasses.

Aziraphale pulled out his phone and called Crowley’s number, one more time. 

The ring tone echoed around the room. 

He looked around frantically, located the source of the sound, and dropped to his knees to see the phone glowing under the sofa. As he reached for it, his fingers brushed something else that he hadn’t seen. A long black feather, partially wedged under the edge of the rug.

Aziraphale stood rather unsteadily and finally allowed himself the luxury of sitting on the vast sofa, with Crowley’s phone in one hand and the crow-dark feather in the other. 

The phone listed 57 missed calls, 28 new texts and 14 new voice messages from only one number, under his own name.

“Oh fuck,” he said for exactly the second time in his existence.

After a few minutes of chest-heaving panic he managed to calm down enough to try and think rationally. Crowley would not have gone anywhere without his glasses, his phone, or the Bentley. Not willingly. Which meant that he’d either been discorporated _ (not that, please not that) _ or someone had taken him, body and all. Or, perhaps, he’d fled for his life. Or maybe he’d zapped himself into the phone line again.

Aziraphale dropped his head into his hands. So anything could have happened.

Unbidden, the prophetic words of Agnes Nutter popped into his head. 

_ When you find him not... she who speaks with the departed.  _

Madame Tracy. 

He found himself downstairs and about to call for a taxi when he saw the Bentley again, and Aziraphale made yet another rather radical decision. He’d never admitted it to Crowley, but he had learned to drive - having been taught by a lovely young lady in the Women’s Land Army during WW2. 

He didn’t even need to miracle open the door - it seemed to spring open under his hand - or wave his fingers to start the engine, as it hummed to life as soon as he’d sat down. And he had barely put his hands on the wheel when it seemed to leap out onto the road of its own volition. 

“Infernal machine,” he muttered at it, but it just purred back at him like a cat who’d found the lap of the one person who despised it and was now making itself very much at home.

As usual, the Bentley made short work of the traffic and he found a parking spot right in front of Madame Tracy’s house. He managed not to run to the door, but his knock was forceful and desperate.

The door swung open and he found himself being glared at by the familiar, dour face of Sergeant Shadwell.

“It’s you,” the man said with his usual snarl. “I hafta tell ye, I’ve retired from the witchfinding game. I’m goin’ to take up beekeeping.”

“Actually, I’m here to see Madame Tracy. Is she in?”

Shadwell frowned, then turned and bellowed. “Oi, jezebel, that southern pansy is here to see you!” He led Aziraphale into a kitchen that was deeply familiar, although Aziraphale had never actually seen it with own eyes.

“Don’t try anything,” Shadwell growled at him as they stepped in the door. “I took ye out before with just this-” he held up his finger, “and I can do it agen.” He gave Aziraphale one last threatening glower then backed out, muttering about being just next door. 

“Oh hello love,” Tracy said from where she was putting a kettle on the hob. “What a nice surprise. Fancy a cuppa?”

Aziraphale crossed the kitchen and grasped Madame Tracy’s coral-nailed hands in his own. “Under normal circumstances, yes. But I am afraid I require your assistance rather urgently. Your  _ psychic _ assistance.”

“I’m sorry love but I’m not doing that any more; that last seance I did where you interrupted everything rather put the wind up my regulars,” Tracy said. “I’m selling this place and me and Mr Shadwell are going to move north, get ourselves a little cottage. He’s going to take up beekeeping. I’m going to write my life story.”

Aziraphale’s face didn’t so much fall as collapse. “Please,” he said. “I’ve lost Crowley. I don’t know where he is, and I don’t know how to find him. I need your help.”

“Oh your young man? Did you have a little tiff? Have you tried sending him a text message?” Tracy said, helpfully.

“Of course I jolly well have! He hasn’t just wandered off down the shops without telling me, something’s happened. It must have done,” Aziraphale felt vaguely ashamed of himself for yelling, and he pressed his hands into his eyes. “His flat was empty. His phone was there, and his glasses, and his car, and he wouldn’t just leave his plants.”  _ He wouldn’t just leave me. _ He didn’t mention the black feather in his pocket, or Agnes Nutter’s incomplete, terrifying prophecy.

Tracy gave a sigh, and took the kettle off before it could come to a boil. “All right then, just this once. But none of that nonsense where you jump inside me, right?”

“By all that is holy, I swear I will never do that to you again,” Aziraphale said fervently. Tracy smiled, and led him into her parlour. 

He sat and waited anxiously as she drew the curtains, lit some candles, and finally sat beside him. She took his hands over the table.

“Rightio, I want you close your eyes and picture your Mr Crowley in your mind’s eye... and then we will focus our psychic energies upon him, and the veil between worlds shall part, and a location will reveal itself to us. Hopefully. It always works when Mr Shadwell loses his keys at the pub, so it shouldn’t fail us now. Are you ready?”

Aziraphale nodded, and closed his eyes. He summoned up his last memory of Crowley- in the flat, drinking wine, sitting opposite him. The tilt of his head. His golden eyes. The point at the side of his jaw where red hair met pale skin, and in between the serpentine brand of hell. The line of his neck, the dip of his collarbones before they disappeared beneath his shirt. The arch between his thumb and forefinger, the jut of bone at the side of his wrist. 

Madam Tracy gave a little cough. “Oooh, very evocative,” she said. “Just, I also need you think about how much you want to find him.”

Aziraphale did as she said. He could hear a clock ticking distantly and tried to ignore the passing seconds, returning to the image of Crowley he’d built in his mind and adding in the aching void left by his absence. Just as he was sure absolutely nothing was happening, he felt a spaciousness open up around him, as if Madame Tracy’s little parlour had become a vast cavern.

“Open your eyes, love,” Tracy said. 

He did, and saw he and Tracy were standing somewhere grey and blank without any depth or dimension.

“Is this right?” He asked.

“Right enough. It’s always a bit different, depending on what you’re looking for. One time I tried to find Mrs Flynn’s cat and it was as if I was half a foot tall. All giant furniture and huge feet. Anyway, I feel something over that way. And, whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand.” She squeezed his fingers reassuringly, and gestured in one direction which looked indistinguishably grey. Or was it? Was there something darker that way, a thickening in the mist?

They both took a step in the direction of the shadow, and it was as if a sudden wall of darkness loomed above them. Madame Tracy’s face was pale but set in a grim line. 

“I think your young man is in a spot of trouble,” she said.

He almost told her to stop out of concern for her, but it was Crowley. He couldn’t not go on, even if it meant dragging Tracy with him. She nodded at him and they both tentatively took another step into the darkness, then another... and then ahead of them, he saw Crowley. He was sitting on a chair. A white lawn chair, it seemed. He was tied to it, and his head was tipped forward, hair down over his face. 

There were dark, wet-looking patches spreading all over his black shirt, and he lifted his head as Tracy and Aziraphale crept closer. His face was battered and bruised, one eye swollen almost shut, the other crusted with blood. It had trickled down his neck. 

His wings were out, but they were crushed against him by the ropes.

Aziraphale made a low sound of horror.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said flatly. “And your friend with the dress. That’s a new one.”

“Crowley, what’s happened to you-“ Aziraphale reached out but Tracy tugged his other hand.

“You can’t touch him, love, that’s not how it works.”

Crowley looked at Tracy and said in that same strange tone, “he just strangled me about five minutes ago, so I think he can.”

Aziraphale felt sick and confused, but spoke as calmly and quickly as he could. “Crowley, dearest, I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to know where you are.”

The demon tried to shrug but it obviously hurt him, because he grimaced. “No idea, Aziraphale. Now, does this mean this time it’s going to be a rescue and  _ then _ you’ll stick your flaming sword in my guts?”

“What do you mean?” Aziraphale tried to keep his voice steady but it cracked despite his efforts. 

“I mean, I’m somewhere dark and damp and I don’t know where. Come on, get it over with, you stupid fucking nightmare,” Crowley snarled then and began thrashing against his restraints. The lawn chair didn’t seem strong enough but somehow it didn’t tip over. Then he stopped, panting, and glared at Tracy and the angel.

“Madame Tracy, can you sense his location?” Aziraphale had never felt so horrified and confused. 

“Not really. North? North-ish? But I am getting a very strange aura from Mr Crowley. This is very bad.”

Crowley was watching them with narrowed eyes now. Without letting go of Tracy’s hand, Aziraphale crouched down in front of Crowley.

“My love,” he said, but Crowley let out a bark of savage laugh.

“That’s how I know you’re not real, you fucker. Aziraphale’s never said that to me, not in 6000 years. Try harder!”

“Crowley, I’m sorry, it is me, ask me something only I will know-“

Crowley smirked. “You’re a torment plucked out of my own head, Aziraphale.” The way he said his name was mocking, savage. “You know everything I know.”

Aziraphale could feel whatever hope he’d had on seeing Crowley slipping away.

“Fine then, I’ll tell you something you don’t know - I don’t know where you are, and I’m so scared. Crowley. I can’t lose you. I love you-”

“Boring!” Crowley yelled. “The declaration of your undying affection right before you drown me in holy water, or strangle me, or strike me with lightning? We’ve done that a dozen times today already.” He tipped back his head now and hissed. “Listen up Hastur. It’s not going to work. You can’t break me with this.”

“Mr Aziraphale,” Madame Tracy said, low and urgent, upset. “I’m sorry, I think we should go. Whatever is going on, I don’t think we’re helping.”

Aziraphale tried to catch his eye one last time. “Crowley, please. It’s me. And I’m coming for you.”

Crowley growled and looked anywhere but at Aziraphale. “There’s no one coming for me. No one rescues demons. Now get out of my head!”

And the connection was gone, and Aziraphale and Madame Tracy were back sitting dazed and silent in her parlour.

He somehow made it back to the bookshop, though when he got there he could barely unlock the door, and went straight to his cluttered little desk and sat down. He put his head into his hands, and sat like that for a very long time.

* * *

Crowley had known things were bad when he’d woken up tied to a white plastic chair in what he could only assume was an abandoned warehouse. He knew things were well and truly fucked when he saw the demonic altar in front of him. 

It looked grossly organic, as if it had been extracted from somewhere deep underground. It sprouted tumorous malignancies, strange horns and fleshy tubes in putrid purples, old blood red, and gangrenous green. A gross flowering thing of darkness and decay. At its heart was the oily dark void of an obsidian mirror, although at this moment it reflected nothing. 

Crowley could see the altar had an enchantment on it - when he squinted it looked instead like a video camera on a tripod. 

But he knew exactly what it was. He’d helped create it.

He craned his head around trying to see more of the dark, dripping space around him. The white plastic chair he was tied to was, in turn, secured to a steel beam. And he could see, in a circle a few metres in diameter, the faintly glimmering sigils and signs of what he was pretty sure was some sort of demonic circle. 

He wondered how long he’d been unconscious. 

He gave a few exploratory thrashes to see how securely he was bound. As he’d known they would be, the ropes were secure. It was a cheap chair, but he was weakened by both the attack and the demonic defences around him. 

He cleared his throat. “I’m ready to beg and plead for my life now,” he announced.

“Your life ain’t worth jack shit,” a familiar voice said from one of the dark corners of the warehouse.

“Not you again Hastur,” Crowley said, although of course Hastur was involved in this, the shitty icing on the shitty cake. “Isn’t this exactly what you  _ weren’t _ supposed to do? What part of ‘leave Crowley the fuck alone’ are you having trouble with?”

Hastur stepped into the light and shambled just beyond the faint glow of the demon-proof ring of glyphs. 

“This is nothing to do with me, Crowley,” he said with a delighted and disgusting grin. “It’s independent agents what have captured you and imprisoned you and are just about to begin torturing you with the Mirror of Dantalian. I’m just... passing by.”

Hastur gestured and there was the man from Crowley’s flat, and beside him a woman, the woman from Kew Gardens. They stood watching him, both of them radiating menace. 

“Indeed, serpent,” someone else materialized from the darkness to stand beside Hastur, a tall, handsome man clad in an extraordinarily expensive and well-tailored Italian wool suit. Gabriel. “It seems this time you’ve fallen afoul of entirely human actors.”

There weren’t many ethereal beings who Crowley hated more than Hastur, but one of them was the archangel Gabriel. 

And at the sight of him, Crowley plunged into a whole new level of fear. Gabriel hated Crowley, but with Aziraphale, it was  _ personal _ . 

Whatever this was, there was no way Aziraphale wasn’t somehow involved. They might already have him, tied up somewhere else, and Crowley could do nothing.

He felt sick and scared and  _ helpless _ , but he wasn’t going to give either of them the pleasure of witnessing his fear if he could help it, so he tilted his head back and gave a tiny smile. 

“Who else have you get stashed back there? Santa Claus? The ghost of Margaret Thatcher? Well, anyway, consider this me begging for my life. Plead, moan, bargain, wail, blah blah. Now that’s done, why don’t one of you two pillocks make yourself useful and untie me?”

“Hah,” Hastur said nastily. “You think you’re so funny. You won’t be laughing soon.”

“I’m not laughing. I’m rather annoyed. I’m missing a nice lunch, you’ve ruined my second favourite jacket, and my head is killing me because some bastard bashed me. In my own home. That’s just uncalled for,” Crowley said, as coolly as he could manage. Which wasn’t very.

His head really did hurt, a lot. The magic in the place was definitely blocking his ability to heal himself. Least of his problems, really, but it still hurt. “But if you let me go now, I won’t mention this to downstairs, and we can forget it ever happened and go back to ignoring each other for all eternity.”

Gabriel had, while he was talking, calmly strolled into the magical circle with the dark-haired human. The human was doing something to the Mirror of Dantalian while Gabriel stood and smirked at Crowley, his hands clasped in front of him. He was close enough for Crowley to kick, if his legs hadn’t been tied to the chair. 

Crowley vowed he’d make the bastard eat his immaculately tailored suit if he ever got free, which probably wasn’t going to happen, but he imagined it viciously. Of course it looked like a Zegna, which meant he’d probably cry while he stuffed it down Gabriel’s throat.

“You really are one of the most irritating things in creation,” Gabriel said mildly. 

The human stepped back from the Mirror. Streaks of dark light were running down its sides now, and the obsidian chunk was starting to glimmer.

“Takes one to know one,” Crowley snapped back, sickening dread flowering inside him. He’d seen enough humans go through this, and he knew what was coming. The Mirror would replay his memories, moments twisted by his own fears and horrors, his own personal hell. 

The Mirror was humming now, a low throbbing that was beginning to fill his head. 

Gabriel leaned over him, not quite close enough to bite but close enough that Crowley could smell his cologne. And under that, the rotten egg stench of hell.

“Have fun,” the archangel said pleasantly, and stepped smartly out of the circle just as the Mirror began to spark.

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut, but the sound of the Mirror was like oleaginous tentacles sliding into his ears, into his mouth and nose, coiling around his neck, slipping under the collar of his shirt and writhing across his skin. He gagged as his eyes flew open and the dark coruscating light emanating from the altar was inside him instantly, throbbing obscenely. He tried to scream but nothing came out, there was just light in darkness and noise in silence.

His own flat in London, the bathtub filled with holy water. “It’s been hell since I met you,” the angel had whispered a moment after kissing him. “Crowley, we can’t, I can’t, I can’t suffer you to live, I’m so very sorry. My lovely one, I can’t turn away from heaven. Not even for you,”

And then Aziraphale wrestled him into the faintly glowing water, Crowley’s hands desperate on his shoulders, but the angel was vastly stronger.

The church, the nazis, his feet on fire. He managed to rescue the angel and his books, but instead of a miraculous survival, he was torn apart by a bomb.  _ He didn’t help me _ , he thought with shock in the second before the shrapnel tore him apart.

Paris in 1793 had a terrible stink, like a slaughterhouse. It wasn’t as bad as Lisbon during the plague, but it was bad enough. Crowley was on his knees, hands and neck pinned in place by a heavy plank. Behind him he could hear the droning of a priest.  _ That won’t help _ , he thought grimly. He lifted his head up to look over a jeering crowd.

There in the front row, the angel- clad not in his cream and ivory popinjay’s outfit, but something rather like a cassock. Their eyes met.

_ Help me _ , he mouthed desperately, but Aziraphale didn’t move.

“Kill him!” The crowd was chanting. He heard the whicker of the blade falling above him and then a vast searing cold swallowed him whole.

He was struggling with the stiff armour, the smell of it thick and oily. It was cold in the damp valley, but he was coated with sweat- it dripped down into his face unpleasantly. He raised his sword again and it clashed with Aziraphale’s, the force of the blow making his arms shake.

He was tired and his limbs felt like lead. 

“Do we really have to do this?” He said, twisting away as quickly as he could. The angel was surprisingly fast, but he was coming to realise that, over and over again. Fast and strong. He looked soft, he’d always seemed soft, but he wasn’t. At least, not here.

_ But none of this is real, _ Crowley thought, but he had to parry Aziraphale’s next blow, and he couldn’t focus on that thought, not now.

“I have put on the armour of God,” Aziraphale shouted at him, his face twisted under the visor. “I will stand against your darkness and your wickedness.”

And then Crowley was too slow, and Aziraphale’s sword hit him in the shoulder, pain flowering outwards as the angel wrenched the blade free. He staggered and fell to his knees, dark clouding his vision, and then the sword came again, and the pain was indescribable.

It felt real enough.

The angel in his creamy top hat in St James park, those ludicrous mutton chops - not that Crowley could talk. 

Aziraphale’s face was unnaturally calm as Crowley handed him the note. There was a long stretch of silence, as both of them looked down at the ducks instead of each other.

Crowley wanted him to understand, and knew that he wouldn’t, and knew too that this was going to end badly, again, in some new and awful way. He shut his eyes. 

“If you really want to die so badly,” Aziraphale’s voice was ice in his ear, “then I’ll grant you your wish.”

There was the crackle of heavenly lightning, and Crowley was on fire, but not in the way of hell which he knew and understood, this was smiting, heaven’s own punishment, and he was really, truly, burning-

  
  


If only he could get Aziraphale to understand, to agree, to do something other than just fussing while the world lurched inexorably towards the ending. He wheeled around in the street as they walked towards the bandstand. 

“Even if this all ends up in a puddle of burning goo, we can go off together,” he said, desperately.  _ Say yes, say yes, say yes this time. _

Aziraphale’s expression hardened. 

“Go off together? Listen to yourself,” the angel spat. “We’re on opposite sides.”

“We’re on our side,” Crowley said, again. 

“There is no ‘our side’, Crowley. Not anymore. It's over,” Aziraphale said. Even though it was the middle of London, there was no-one else around, no-one to see the sword flash into being in his hand.

“Fuck this,” Crowley said, trying not to panic, again, refusing to run, again. Again again again. “This isn’t real. Aziraphale, this isn’t real. I don’t know what’s happening but this isn’t real.”

The sword flashed, again, and again he felt it, the searing agony in his guts, which he still wasn’t sure was from the blade itself or the horror of knowing it was Aziraphale who struck him down.

  
  


He woke all at once with a horrified gasp and a jerk, which hurt. The wrist ties were biting and his feet were numb, and the pain in his head had multiplied.

“Enjoy that did you?” He heard Hastur say from nearby.

“Is that the best you can do?” Crowley spat. He sounded hoarse to his own ears. 

“How long do you think you were in there, Crowley?”

Crowley didn’t answer, but he thought it might have been days. Days and days of - of Aziraphale - of the sword - of death, coming to him with eyes like the ocean.

“It’s been one hour and thirty seven minutes. I just had to wake you up to tell you that. Isn’t it a clever thing? ‘Course you know that, it was all your idea.”

“No. Not my idea. Not like this.” 

Hastur laughed at him then, appearing in a shaft of dull light. 

“You never were much of a demon, but you had them fooled, didn’t you?” 

Crowley let his head fall back.

“No,” he said. “You’re right about that, Hastur. Not much of a demon, never was. My idea was just to let humans relive the worst moments of their lives over and over. But Lucifer didn’t think that was enough. Never did understand humans, did he? None of you do. But I suppose he was right about this being so much worse. Drives them mad in a very special way.”

And it would drive him mad, too, eventually. Probably a good thing to be stark raving bonkers if you had to spend eternity reliving 6000 years twisted into a nightmare. Some of it had been bad enough the first time. 

And then he thought, if this was what they were doing to him, what were they doing to Aziraphale?

That old instinct kicked in.

He had to get free. He had to help Aziraphale. He looked around desperately, to see if there was something nearby he could launch himself against, something to cut the rope with. Something. 

But there was nothing, just distant dark walls, dripping water, shadows. Steel girders overhead, grimy windows letting through weak light. 

“Rightio, break time is over,” Hastur sneered. 

The Mirror began to hum and swirl again, and even though he tried not to, Crowley began to moan.

* * *

Days passed, though for Aziraphale they might have been centuries. He stared at the scraps of Agnes Nutter’s last prophecy. Tracy left him a few messages- she’d tried to psychically locate Crowley again but each attempt was a failure. He called Anathema, who attempted a few spells of her own, with as little success as Tracy. He’d even asked Adam, but the boy’s powers were, if not completely gone, then buried deep enough he had nothing to offer.

“I’m sorry,” the boy had said over the phone line. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”

It was intolerable. It felt like Aziraphale was choking slowly, suffocating with each moment that Crowley wasn’t there. 

Was he dead? Surely Aziraphale would have known, his angelic mental map of the universe would have torn and burnt. Instead, an absence. He could feel the city around him, the push and pull of human emotions, but no Crowley. 

The humans radiated so much emotion, and as the human population had ballooned into the billions over the last few decades he’d had to deliberately stop noticing all the love. 

But now he could feel it pressing against him all the time, sometimes beautiful and transcendent, generous and giving, but also possessive, uneasy, frightened. That was the dark underbelly of love, that terrible fear and grief, the fear of it being taken away, the grief when it was gone. 

But he wouldn’t let himself think Crowley was gone. It was impossible. A universe without stars, a world without a dawn.

On the evening of the fourth day, Aziraphale locked the door of the bookshop behind him.

He made his way to a smallish church nearby. It had been destroyed in the blitz but rebuilt afterwards, a graceful little building that looked somewhat like the other church Aziraphale had seen destroyed. It wasn’t the same place, of course; he couldn’t bear that.

The church door may have been locked, but it opened under Aziraphale’s hand and he walked into the dark and silent space.

He sat down in one of the pews and fidgeted for a moment, before sending up not a prayer, but a summoning of sorts. 

It didn’t take long before he heard a feathery rustling behind him, and he opened and his eyes and turned around.

The angel Eleleth was a malakhim, a messenger, and thus easier for Aziraphale to contact. Aziraphale had thought long and hard about whether any of the angels of heaven would respond to his request, and had decided on Eleleth because she’d always seemed a little less judgemental and regimented than most of the others. 

He ignored the little voice of Crowley in his head laughing at Aziraphale judging another angel for being judgmental and regimented.

“If anyone knew I was here I’d be in so much trouble,” she said. She manifested as a woman with long dreadlocks, dressed in the beige attire that heaven had decided was most appropriate for earthly visits. She was wearing very nice shoes, however, bright red high heels. They weren’t regulation, and somehow this minor rebellion made Aziraphale feel calmer. 

She slid into the pew beside him. 

“Eleleth. How have you been?” He said as brightly as he could manage, which wasn’t at all.

“Same old, same old, singing the glory of God all day every day, bit of celestial messaging, a minor miracle here and there. It’s been a bit dull since the whole end times debacle, but I’m keeping busy. And how are you holding up, what with everything?” She gave him a collegial shoulder nudge. 

“I’m fine,” Aziraphale lied. “But I do need something. Information.”

Eleleth nodded, unsurprised. “I didn’t think this was a social call.”

“My... friend. The demon Crowley. He’s disappeared, and he’s in trouble, and I just wanted to know if heaven might have had anything to do with it.”

Eleleth made a surprised noise. “If it has, I don’t know about it. The orders are that you and that demon are to be left alone, and no one has said any different. And who’d go against heaven’s orders?”

_ Me _ , Aziraphale thought, but didn’t say. 

“I’m sorry about him being missing. Seemed like quite an ok guy, for a demon.”

“You know him?”

“Oh we only met, like, one time, I think it was in China? But he was polite, didn’t try to eat me, which I appreciated. Also, he had very nice cheekbones.” Eleleth gave a little grin. “To be honest, we were all rather surprised you didn’t fall when we heard you’d been ... you know... with a demon,” she raised her eyebrows suggestively.

Aziraphale was too tired and heartsick to say that even if he and Crowley had been _you knowing_ this whole time - and  _ why  _ hadn’t they? - it really didn’t deserve that scandalized face she was pulling.

“But...” she dropped her voice in a conspiratorial murmur, “I shouldn’t be saying this but... you’re not the only one who wasn’t happy about the grand plan. There’s been quite a bit of support for you in some quarters.”

“Eleleth,” Aziraphale said very quietly. “It was dangerous enough for you to come here. And I’m very grateful. But you need to be careful about things like that.”

“I know, Aziraphale. But we’ve been wondering - why didn’t you fall? Maybe things have changed, with Her. The first time we all got together to talk about it, we all thought we’d be cast out immediately. But we haven’t been. And the archangels,” here she pulled another face, this time as though there was a sour taste in her mouth, “they’ve been awful lately. Gabriel’s just been the worst. And I heard a rumour he’s been spending an awful lot of time on earth. I’m not saying he’s done something to your demon. But just... keep an eye out for him ok?”

And then she rustled off back to heaven. 

From there he made his way to Highgate Cemetery. 

He wasn’t at all nervous about what he was about to do, and that should have worried him, but he felt now completely disconnected from the Aziraphale of the past, the one who worried about breaking the rules and getting caught and what heaven might think. He’d be damned, or he wouldn’t. He’d take damnation if it meant having Crowley back.

He was going to summon a demon.

He’d never actually summoned a demon before, unless he counted just hanging around and waiting for one to inevitably show up and ask him to lunch as “summoning”. But he’d found the ritual in one of his books on the occult and prepared the materials, and here he was, sitting in a dark cemetery, chanting something that sounded like spitting.

And it worked. In the dark pentagram he’d marked out on the lawn with string, smoke boiled from nowhere and a figure materialized.

Aziraphale had room in his brain for two sorts of demons: horrible disgusting ones and Crowley. This demon was one of the former. It looked a bit like a pig dressed up as a bat, but much less pleasant than that description suggested.

“Yeah, whaddya want?” It grunted as soon as the smoke cleared.

“Oh foul fiend from Hell I have bound thee,” Aziraphale began.

“Get on with it,” the creature sighed. “Whaddya got to trade?”

“I seek information on the demon Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “And I trade you...” with his foot, he pushed a box into the pentagram. The demon squatted and opened the box and gave a grunt of satisfaction after pulling out the whiskey and then pawing through all the magazines, which were primarily 1970s and 80s pornography. 

“Oh yeah, this is good. These are hot items downstairs.” 

Aziraphale didn’t bother responding. He didn’t need demon banter right now, he needed knowledge. “I need to know the location of the demon Crowley,” he repeated.

This demon made a surprised sound. “Oh, so it’s you. The angel. Funny, I thought you’d be better looking.”

“I’m not here to be insulted. I need to know. Do you or does anyone in hell know where Crowley is?” Aziraphale said again, as though speaking to a small child.

The demon pulled a phone from, well, somewhere about its person and tapped into it for a few minutes.

“Nah, just what I thought, he’s not on any of our systems anymore. He’s gone off book, and the penalty for anyone bothering him is pretty nasty. I haven’t heard much about him informally either. Usually a hot topic of gossip, our Crowley is, and the satanic nuns used to just love him. But not since he hooked up with you. They were very disappointed by that, the satanic nuns.”

The demon picked up the box of old magazines. “That it then? Can I interest you in obscene wealth, power beyond compare, artistic genius, or a few dozen nubile young things? I’ve never traded with an angel before. Don’t suppose you’d let me take a few feathers? I could do some things with angel feathers.”

“Absolutely not,” Aziraphale replied woodenly, and the demon disappeared in as much smoke as it had arrived in.

He packed up the supplies, wound up the string he’d used to mark out the pentagram, and walked back to the bookshop. Dawn was lightening the air. Five days, now, since he’d been to the flat.

He felt as though he was deep underwater, down where the wavelengths of visible light barely penetrated, and everything was perpetually dark and cold, crushed by the immense pressure. Crowley was lost, and so was he.

Despair was a sin, and Crowley had been missing not even a week and he was already plunged deep into it. He knew something terrible had happened, the psychic walk with Madame Tracy had showed him that, but otherwise he was out of clues, out of ideas, and out of contacts in high or low places. 

There had to be something else he could do. He just didn’t know what. 

He’d been such a fool, and now it was too late. 

And then his phone gave a little ding.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Go on, angel, if you do it quick it barely hurts at all,” he whispered.
> 
> Aziraphale could hear the sword humming. It had always wanted to be used, and he’d felt somehow, when he’d been the angel at the gates, that it had been disappointed to belong to such a pitiful excuse for an angel. He looked down at Crowley again. My beloved Crowley , he thought, and then back into the flames that wreathed the blade. 
> 
> This is the last chapter of utter nastiness, I promise.  
> Content warning for violence, physical harm, and character death (no-one we like though).  
> Thanks to NarumiKaiku for helping all the moving parts come together.

The neon lights of Soho gleamed on the Bentley’s black paintwork and Crowley opened the door, already knowing the angel would be inside, his hands wrapped around the tartan thermos.

“I work in Soho, I hear things,” Aziraphale said darkly as Crowley slid into the driver’s seat. 

He didn’t want to look at Aziraphale, didn’t want to know what it was going to be this time.

This time.

This wasn’t real.

But it felt like it was, and his hands were trembling on the steering wheel. It felt so very painfully wretchedly real.

Something inside him cracked a little then, and he remembered, in a flash of vision, a white lawn chair, his arms and wings bound by holy rope, the demon-proof circle, Hastur and Gabriel, the demon hunters, the warehouse. 

None of this was happening, it was the past, it was in his mind, he _knew_ that. It was the Mirror. He was trapped in his own memories, and this Aziraphale was nothing but a torture device.

Crowley looked at the angel, backlit with lurid colour from the signs outside, and everything seemed to waver for a moment. He remembered that night, and held onto the memory, the true one, the way Aziraphale had looked at him. _He did it for me, because he loved me. He loves me._ He saw now what that night must have cost Aziraphale, he’d known it at the time too, but it had been easier to pretend it had been fear for the angel’s own neck, and not what it really was. _He thought I’d use it on myself._

With that in his mind, a tiny jewel of the truth, Crowley cast his mind back, through the years, and saw the true memories like more shining stones underwater. All of Aziraphale’s kindnesses, and his unthinking cruelties too. But he hadn’t been cold, he’d just been afraid, and loyal to heaven, and yes a bit of a bastard, but never like _this_.

The real Aziraphale would never have drawn his sword against Crowley.

“Drink it,” this Aziraphale said, his face hard and unyielding. 

Crowley grinned, took the thermos from the angel’s hands and opened the cap, and drank the contents in one long swallow. 

It burned as he could only imagine real holy water would.

* * *

All the message said was _I have information about the demon Crowley_ and the number was unknown. There was a location entered as a link to google maps, which Aziraphale didn’t have, so he had to download the app, which took a frustratingly long time - any time was too much time - and then he worried about taking a taxi that far and then he remembered the Bentley, and then he thought, _what if it’s a trap._ But of course it was a trap, and he didn’t care. Crowley as in hell, and he’d walked into hell for Crowley once before, he’d do it a thousand times, a hundred thousand. He’d do it every day for the rest of time. 

The Bentley let him in, again, and he drove into a grey morning, the unnaturally beautiful weather of that summer finally giving up to the inevitability of a late-August cold spell, rain pelting down on the windscreen. 

The location was just outside some midlands town that had seen better days. Aziraphale kept missing the turn off, and it seemed to take forever to backtrack, but when the Bentley finally rolled into an empty asphalt lot beside a hulking row of warehouses he knew it was the right place. Something about _the place_ itched at him, like a thorn caught in fabric, scraping into his mind. 

He stepped out of the Bentley and looked around cautiously. 

“Hello?” He said into the empty air, rather stupidly, but then a voice replied.

“Over here, Mr Aziraphale.”

He turned to see a short woman with red hair. She was standing just outside a rusty metal door in the side of the otherwise hulkingly blank grey edifice of the nearest warehouse. She was small and compact and something about her was sharp and bright, reminding him of some of the warrior angels he’d known in heaven. Any hope he’d had that this wasn’t a trap was stripped away by her direct stare, the hardness around her eyes.

“I’m here about Crowley.”

“I know. Come inside. There’s someone who wants to speak with you.” She wrenched open the door and beckoned him to follow into a dark cramped space, then before another door.

“In here,” she said, and he opened the door with his heart in his mouth. 

And then, for the third time in his life, he said “fuck”.

“Aziraphale!” It was Gabriel, sitting behind an incongruously shiny desk. “There you are.”

“Fuck,” Aziraphale said, again. It was getting to be a habit. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a fucking pound. “Where’s Crowley?”

“Is that any way to say hello to someone you’ve known forever?” Gabriel stood and walked around the desk, and then leaned against it, giving Aziraphale a self-satisfied smile. “I know our last meeting was a little ... difficult. But I think we could work to put it behind us. Become friends again.”

“Gabriel, we‘ve never been friends. Where. Is. Crowley.”

The archangel was gloating now, Aziraphale knew. There was something about his face that made Aziraphale uneasy, even more so than usual, a shadowing around his normally pearlescent eyes. And the warehouse had a strange, smoky smell, almost chemical. 

It was the smell of hell, Aziraphale remembered. _I’m probably going to die for good here_ , he thought, and tamped down on the fear _. This is for Crowley. I will not be afraid, for Crowley._

“Tell me, Aziraphale, what is it with you and this demon? You do remember he’s basically a snake in a human suit, don’t you?”

 _Unlike you, Gabriel, a psychopath in an angel suit._ “That’s none of your business, Gabriel. Where is he?”

“But it is my business, Aziraphale. Like it or not, you’re still a principality of heaven.”

“I’m not,” Aziraphale said. “We’re on our own side now.”

Gabriel gave him a pitying look. “We? You and the demon? What a joke. Wake up and smell the sulphur, Aziraphale. Do you really think Crowley’s your friend? That your little arrangement was anything other than a racket? He’s a demon, he’s been following orders, and you’ve been had. Everything you did was orchestrated by hell.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes in his best Crowley imitation. “You’re really going to have to try harder than that. Where is he, Gabriel?”

Gabriel shook his head, with pious sadness. “You’ve got one last chance, here, Aziraphale, to earn Heaven’s forgiveness. Come with me.”

 _He’s alive_ , Aziraphale thought with buoyant hope. But he tried to keep his face blank as the archangel led him out of the little office and into the bowels of the warehouse.

It took a few minutes of clattering along steel staircases, descending further and further, with the sulphurous stench of hell growing ever stronger, to reach a shadowed cavernous space. Gabriel didn’t seem to notice the smell, but it made Aziraphale’s stomach churn.

They walked forward and he saw a sudden burst of light, and there was Crowley. It was just like the vision he’d experienced with Madame Tracy, except that Crowley looked much worse, slumped in the white plastic lawn chair with blood seeping from cuts across his brow, one side of his face noticeably swollen. But he was alive, because when the light came on he flinched, and he was making a horrible low noise. Aziraphale made to move to him but Gabriel gripped his arm.

“I don’t think so, Aziraphale.”

The woman stood by on one side of the chair, while a dark haired man flanked Crowley on the other side. 

And standing behind them all was Hastur.

“Wake him up,” Gabriel instructed, and the man casually smashed his fist into Crowley’s face. Aziraphale gasped but Gabriel’s hand was fast on his arm. 

Crowley woke almost instantly with a snarl, his eyes bright and feral.

“Stop doing that!” He hissed. “That is really fucking unpleasant!” 

And then he saw Aziraphale.

“Oh no no no. No. I told you, whatever you wanted, to leave him out of it. Just, I don’t care, do what you want to me, just. Let him go. Please,” he said urgently.

Aziraphale tore his eyes away from the battered demon and looked at Gabriel, trying to steady himself enough to figure out some way to get them both out of this mess. “He’s been tortured and beaten, Gabriel. Is this heaven’s forgiveness?”

Gabriel’s hand felt very hot and hard on his arm, like a heated iron manacle, straight out of a forge. “He’s a demon, Aziraphale. He’s incapable of caring about you. How could you choose that over heaven?”

Crowley’s face flickered through several expressions, before settling on a suddenly manic grin, a familiar, flashing slyness.

“Oh yes,” he said. “He’s right. Caught me out. It’s all been a big evil plan and you fell for it. _Six thousand years_ of pretending to be your friend, it was really just so dull. And now I can stop being Nice Old Crowley. So let’s just let the nice angel go home to his books and a cup of tea. Listen to your boss, angel. I’m just a piece of shit on your shoe, scrape me off and forget about me.”

Aziraphale swallowed. “Crowley,” he said, hopelessly. _Is this supposed to be helping? I’m not sure how this is helping._

Crowley’s face shifted again. “Angel,” he said, wretchedly. “Just do it.”

“Do what?” Aziraphale felt on the edge of hysteria. “I don’t understand any of this.”

Gabriel laughed then, and it was an awful sound. “Oh I think you do.” He held out his hand and gestured fluidly, and all of a sudden he was holding a flaming sword. _The_ flaming sword, the one the Almighty had given the Guardian of the Eastern Gate 6000 years before. War’s sword after, and his own again now. 

The humans flinched back uneasily from it, and Aziraphale wanted to do the same.

“No, absolutely not, never,” he said, but before he could step back Gabriel had thrust the sword in front of him.

“It’s yours, Aziraphale.”

“I will not-”

“TAKE IT,” Gabriel commanded in the voice of heaven, and Aziraphale’s hand closed around the hilt in response to thousands of years of conditioning.

“NOW KILL THE SERPENT,” the archangel commanded, and pushed him forward into the harsh glare of the spotlights. The humans scrambled back. Hastur hissed at the sight of the blade.

“REPENT, KILL THE SERPENT, AND RETURN TO HEAVEN,” Gabriel commanded, his voice booming with seraphic power.

Aziraphale looked down at Crowley, who was smiling again. 

“Go on, angel, if you do it quick it barely hurts at all,” he whispered.

Aziraphale could hear the sword humming. It had always wanted to be used, and he’d felt somehow, when he’d been the Guardian of the eastern Gate, that it had been disappointed to belong to such a pitiful excuse for an angel. He looked down at Crowley again. _My beloved Crowley_ , he thought, and then back into the flames that wreathed the blade. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling,” he said, and dropped the sword onto the ground, where it clattered like a piece of scrap metal, and the flame blinked out. 

Which he instantly knew was an incredibly stupid thing to have done. 

Gabriel roared and launched himself at Aziraphale, knocking him sideways, and picked up the sword. “I knew you were too weak to do it,” he sneered, and there was something very wrong with his voice now.

Aziraphale managed to stumble to his feet and saw to his horror that something terrible was happening to the archangel. The sword was aflame again, but somehow so was Gabriel. Tiny licks of flame were dancing at his feet, and the smell of sulphur was suddenly sickeningly intense. Smoke was curling from his outstretched wings. His face was blotchy and red, sunburnt looking one moment and charred the next. 

_He was falling._

As he stared, the archangel dropped the sword again with a roar, as though it had hurt him- which it certainly had, because celestial fire burned demons as much as hellfire burned angels.

“What did you do?” He turned towards Aziraphale and took a lurching step towards him. 

The blue fire wreathed his whole body, his skin charring, and his hands were grossly stretched and elongated, the nails turning into claws while still at the same time burning. 

“How is that you, of all things, have escaped this, but I, the greatest angel of heaven, have been wrenched from her love?” he howled.

Aziraphale took a step back. “You always did everything for the wrong reasons, Gabriel,” he said.

Gabriel roared and held his flaming hands up. It was not a pleasant sight, and the smell of sulphur and burning flesh was overwhelming.

Crowley chose that moment to let out a loud, somewhat mad sounding laugh, “It hurts, doesn’t it?” 

Gabriel howled again, and staggered forward.

Aziraphale remembered with a start that Crowley was still trapped in the chair within a demon-proof magic circle, and raised his hand and miracled away the ropes tying Crowley down. “Crowley, you’re free!” he yelled just before the burning archangel smashed into the chair. 

There was a blur of fire and darkness and somehow, Crowley was on his feet, unsteady but backing away. 

Gabriel dropped onto all fours and lowered his head, the writhing blue fires around him burning both brighter and darker at once, flame and after-image, his outstretched wings now two great blazing arcs . His head was crowned with fire, which resolved into two great curved and wicked horns. 

Then he stood, taller, vaster, his skin a dark angry red, his wings no longer feathered but ragged and leathery, his hands great black clawed things. He even had a tail, long and whipping, ending in a barb. He looked so much a devil that Aziraphale would have laughed if he hadn’t been terrified. 

“Shit fuck balls,” Aziraphale heard Crowley hiss. 

The next moment lightning flashed inside the warehouse, blindingly bright and booming, and as the after-images faded from his eyes Aziraphale saw Michael, Sandolphon, Uriel, and several other angels had appeared. They must have felt Gabriel fall. 

Everything was still, as if Crowley had frozen time, but he was still in the circle and it must still been blocking his powers and _he was in there with Gabriel-_

The angel had the presence of mind to remember the sword lying behind Gabriel, silent and dark, and he darted to grab it. It lit up in his hands again, and he levelled it as steadily as he could at the fallen angel. 

“Behold, the newest lord of hell,” Gabriel intoned, spreading his arms out widely, and then he turned and smiled at Aziraphale. “You know, once you get used to, it’s not so bad.”

“Hey! That’s my line!” Crowley said, and then everything really went to hell.

Afterwards, Aziraphale would try to piece it back together in his mind, as it all seemed to happen both too fast and too agonizingly slow to make any sense. 

Gabriel appeared torn between his two playthings but quickly chose the nearest; he lowered his horned head and charged at Crowley, still trapped within the magical barrier.

In an instant Crowley was on the ground, and Aziraphale barely had time for a horrified cry of fear before Gabriel turned on him next, his wicked dark claws stained with blood.

He easily leapt the short distance separating them _and it really should have been all over then._

Aziraphale had spent a lot of time the last six millennia having lunch and reading books. And he’d never been one of the fiercest angels before all that- so Gabriel _should_ have gutted him like a fish. But somehow, he didn’t, because Aziraphale had moved with a speed he was really quite sure he didn’t have and turned, and the sword had flamed even brighter, and then it was buried deep within Gabriel’s chest. 

Gabriel burst into flames again, this time the pale cleansing flames of heaven, and then he was gone.

The sword fell once more onto the dirty concrete floor.

 _Crowley._ Azirphale staggered to his knees beside the demon. He hadn’t discorporated, but he was a mess; deep gashes across his chest and stomach from Gabriel’s talons were oozing blood, slower than a human might, but even demons have a finite supply of the stuff. He was terrifyingly still.

 _I need to get him out of the circle,_ Aziraphale thought, one calm spark in his mind like a boat on a sea of terror.

As gently as he could, he scooped Crowley up. The demon didn’t move until Aziraphale stepped across the barrier - that made him give an unearthly shriek and arch his back with pain - but then they were out of the circle, and Aziraphale sank down onto the cold floor. He put one hand tentatively on Crowley’s bloodied chest, shut his eyes, and called down a miracle.

Everything went white, a gentle, suffusing glow. It was the biggest miracle he’d done in years.

He opened his eyes. 

Crowley’s skin had healed, but there were jagged, raised red scars all over his torso, and the demon’s face was still swollen and battered. And he was still motionless. No breath, no flickering eyelids, nothing. But he wasn’t gone. 

Aziraphale sat back on his heels and wiped a hand over his face. Maybe he should try again-

“Aziraphale,” he jerked his head up at that. Michael, her face stricken, stepping towards him from the mass of paralyzed angels. That’s right, Aziraphale remembered, distantly. They had seen it all. 

“Aziraphale...” Michael’s voice was like stone. “Gabriel... he… fell and… you _killed_ him.”

Aziraphale looked up at the shocked faces of the angels. It had been more than six thousand years since an angel had fallen. Since an archangel had fallen. 

“I’m sorry. But hell was too good for him,” Aziraphale finally said.

The angels looked at each other, horrified. Sandalphon looked as if he might cry. 

“You should go now,” Michael said, harshly. “Before we... change our minds.”

Aziraphale looked down at Crowley’s beaten face. _Go where_ , he thought desperately, but it didn’t matter. He picked Crowley up again, as gently as he could. He felt so light in his arms. 

He’d find somewhere, and then he’d wait, and hope.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the God Ships Them chapter (God definitely ships them). Also all the awful stuff is over now. There’s also tense change in here for pretentious writerly reasons, but hopefully it works. Thank you to NarumiKaiko for holding my hand through all my terrible insecurities and being the best beta.

He drove all night, not sure where he was or where he was going. Crowley lay unmoving in the backseat. It had been awkward, folding his wings into the car, but he’d managed it somehow. Aziraphale had bundled his waistcoat under his head and then draped his jacket over his body, and then had started to drive.

He discarded the idea of going back to the bookshop or Crowley’s flat. Gabriel was dead - oh dear god, he’d  _ killed _ an archangel - and those humans had run off, and who knew what Hastur was up to? Nowhere was safe, not really. But he wanted somewhere less obvious. So he drove in what he suspected was circles for a very long time.

At some point it was dawn again and he found himself turning down a narrow road somewhere excessively rural. There were sheep, and hedgerows, and masses of birds twittering joyously in shrubs. The road was a dead end, with a small house at the end, and Aziraphale was about to turn the Bentley around when he noticed the for sale sign. The house was dark and quiet, there weren’t any vehicles in the yard, and it felt very much like it was empty. He decided it would do, and left Crowley still and silent on the back seat while he opened the door with a tiny miracle.

It was only a small cottage, and a little shabby in a way that suggested it had most recently belonged to someone elderly and shortsighted, who liked floral patterns the way that Aziraphale liked tartan. But it was clean and, most importantly, empty.

Aziraphale went back to the car and manoeuvred Crowley out of the backseat. He carried Crowley carefully, a precious thing, too light and too brittle, into the largest bedroom and arranged him on top of the covers of the old fashioned iron and feather bed. 

There was a small, rather aggressively pink wingback armchair by the bed, and Aziraphale dragged it a little closer and sat down. He didn’t know what else to do, now. 

Dappled sunlight painted the wall over the bed, and he thought he might just put his head down and shut his eyes for a moment, and so, for the first time in many years, the angel slept, his head on the bed beside Crowley’s unmoving hand.

* * *

When Aziraphale finally opened his eyes again, it was mid-afternoon. He felt wildly disoriented for a moment, but lifted his head and saw Crowley on the bed in exactly the same position as he’d put him in, flat on his back with his dark wings arching down beside him. 

“Come on Crowley,” he said encouragingly, “it’s time to wake up now.”

Nothing. Not even the flicker of an eyelid. 

He stood up unsteadily - sleep really was most peculiar, he felt almost more tired than he had before - and tried to think of something he could do. 

He could have miracled away the grime and filth, but he thought maybe doing it the human way might help. It was an odd notion, but he decided to do it anyway.

He walked out the room a little guiltily - “I’m not going far, just in case you wake up,” he said the motionless demon - and found the bathroom. There were some faded old towels in a cupboard, and flannel washcloths, which he made softer and nicer and newer with a small miracle, and then wet under the tap.

“Well, dear boy, you’re filthy. I’m going to clean you up.” 

He felt suddenly horrifically embarrassed by the idea to play nursemaid, but he also couldn’t leave Crowley lying there crusted in his own blood. So he settled at the edge of the bed, and set to work.

Crowley’s shirt was mostly rags anyway, so it was easy enough to get off. The scars on his chest and stomach were still livid and raw looking, although they seemed a little better than they had. 

Aziraphale had no idea how long they’d take to heal properly,  _ if at all _ . This was all new territory. Ethereal bodies were generally seen as expendable, but he and Crowley had discussed after the apocalypse how unlikely either heaven or hell would be to grant them new ones.  _ This is it _ , he thought, and then shuddered, because bodies were so fragile. So very fragile. How did humans stand it, walking around the world in a bunch of twigs bound up in skin? 

He washed Crowley’s face gently, across his brow, the lines of his cheekbones, over his eyelids, his jaw. The faint hint of stubble there catching on the washcloth.

He had to clean the blood and dirt out the washcloth twice by the time he washed Crowley’s neck. 

He moved down down his shoulders and lean arms, still bruised by the ropes. His wrists still looked rubbed raw despite Aziraphale’s healing miracle. 

He made more trips to wash blood out of the washcloth, and then he finally wadded it up and threw it in the bin beside the sink, and fetched another. 

This time he gently patted over the scars on his chest, and down his ribs and stomach. 

Crowley’s wings were rather tricky, and Aziraphale settled for gently running the washcloth over the coverts and primaries he could access easily without shifting him too much. 

He felt his determination was rather tested by the existence of Crowley’s stupidly tight trousers, but he undid the belt buckle and pulled them off as carefully as he could, leaving the demon clad only in black boxers. His legs didn’t seem too battered, no more than the rest of him, although his bare feet were black with grime, and took several more trips back and forth to the bathroom sink to get clean. 

He couldn’t remember seeing the demon without shoes on before, usually just those snakeskin boots.  _ Funny how I could know you for thousands of years and never notice your toes, _ he thought, and then tried to remember if Crowley had actually worn snakeskin boots with a chiton back in Greece, and then he had to a hysterical fit of laughter that almost turned into tears.

Of course he’d made a dreadful mess of the sheets, and that was too much for him to deal with, so he miracled those into a fresh set, pulled the sheet up over Crowley’s still form, and tried not to think. 

He’d made a mess of himself too; he was bloody and dirty and more importantly, he felt  _ unclean _ , so he climbed into the poky little shower with all of his clothes on and stood under it until the water ran cold. 

Under the circumstances he decided just to miracle his rumpled shirt and trousers clean and dry. And then he went back into the bedroom, and sat back down in the hideous and none-too-comfortable chair. 

Crowley hadn’t moved.

He took the demon’s unresponsive hand in his, kissed it, and returned to waiting.

* * *

By the next day he’d rather exhausted his ability to study Crowley’s face for signs of wakefulness, and he began to talk to keep himself from going mad. A summer storm was rattling the windows, so he found himself talking about that very first storm over the garden of Eden, and somehow he didn’t stop talking for hours. “Do you remember, Crowley,” he heard himself say. “Do you remember the first time you ever smelled rain? I do, you were there, and I held my wing over you. I thought I knew why I did that, I thought I was just being kind, because you’d had a dreadful day... but even then, I must have known that you were ... well, that you were special. Anyway. Do you know what they call that smell? Petrichor. It’s a lovely word. Don’t you think? I don’t think I’ve ever asked you what your favourite word is. 

“There’s so many things I haven’t asked you. I always rather assumed we’d get around to talking about everything eventually. Do you remember, in Rome, when we had lunch that time? I think that was one of the nicest conversations I’ve ever had. I think of that, every time I have oysters.”

He stopped and took the demon’s hand again, and stroked his fingers over the soft inside of Crowley’s wrist.  _ How did I not realise that even demons have soft places.  _

“That was the first time I ever allowed myself the thought of kissing you, my dear,” he said in a soft voice, as though someone might be listening. “Certainly not the last. Oh no, it became rather the self indulgence. You’d have been shocked, I think, to know how often I rather let my imagination run away with me. We’re not supposed to have imaginations, are we? But I imagined you... and I... together. In so many ways.”

He sighed, and put Crowley’s hand down again. “I always wanted far more than I could have. More food, more books, more wine. But most of all... more  _ you _ . I let myself take everything else, but never what I most wanted.”

When he stopped talking the silence felt so dense it was as if the very air had become thick and solid, so he didn’t stop. He simply kept talking, letting his mind drift through the years, reminding Crowley of everything they’d done together, and that managed to get him from sunrise to another sunset. 

As the sun sank below the horizon he felt tired, so he put his head down on the bed and slept again. 

The fourth day was one of those late summer days that began with a fog that burned off by mid-morning, leaving everything golden and glorious. Aziraphale let himself look out of the window for a while. The garden was wild and overgrown but had obviously once been someone’s passion. There was a rather charming little arch in one corner with roses growing extravagantly all over, and a bench set beneath it. Aziraphale imagined adding some tartan pillows, and sitting there in the evenings and drinking tea. 

“You should see these plants, Crowley - oh, oh dear. Your plants. I didn’t even think of them. Well, I’m sure they’ll be too scared to die on you.”

That made him think of Crowley dying, and he turned back to the bed abruptly, almost expecting it to be empty except for the indent of Crowley’s shape, his physical form burned away to nothing. But Crowley was still there, and... his eyelids twitched, a tiny bit, and his chest rose and fell as if in a sigh. It was just the once, but Aziraphale couldn’t stop himself from watching for it again until his eyes burned and he remembered to blink. He left the light on that night, in case he missed anything.

The fifth and sixth days were awful. Aziraphale was running low on hope and his throat felt scraped raw from speaking so much. He let himself curl down on the bed beside Crowley for a little while, but that felt rather too much as if he were taking some unearned liberty, so he returned to the chair.

“Why didn’t I even ask you, just once, if you felt that way too,” he asked, miserably, hoarsely, and paced to the window, then back to the chair, then to the window again. “Why won’t you wake up, darling?”

Finally at the end of the sixth day he forced himself to leave the room and get a glass of water. 

The kitchen was small and a little dreary, all brown Formica and cracked tiles, but it had French doors leading out to the garden, so he stepped outside and stood in the late afternoon sun for a little while. He had the idea of picking flowers and setting them in a vase next to the bed, because wasn’t that what people did for convalescents?

He rummaged around in the near-empty cupboards until he found an old-fashioned milk bottle, evicted its resident arachnids, and took it outside until he’d assembled a lovely bunch of flowers. He filled it with water, feeling inordinately proud of himself for remembering that flowers need water or they’ll wilt, and turned around to take it back to the bedroom- except Crowley was standing in the doorway, and the bottle slipped out his hands and smashed on the floor.

* * *

Crowley is in a garden. It’s an English cottage garden that’s gone wild, with peonies the size of dinner plates, hollyhocks and foxgloves as tall as he is, against a backdrop of willow trees and oak and elm. There are bees and dragonflies and swallow-shadows racing along the lush green clover lawn.

It’s full daylight among the verdant life of the garden but as he looks up he sees the sky overhead is lit not by the sun but by the vast spiral arm of the Milky Way. He can also see, with his inhuman eyes, the splendour of supernovas, the vast hearts of nebulae, the blur of dying stars circling the black hole at the galaxy’s heart a thousand times a second.

He hasn’t been beneath the sky like this since he fell. _ Did I help with that?  _ He thinks. And then.  _ Am I dreaming, or am I dead?  _

He hears then, a whisper, at the edge of his consciousness. A still, small voice.  _ Crowley _ .

Behind him, there’s a horrible twee arch festooned with climbing roses, and beneath it is a bench lined with tartan pillows. On the bench sits a small, grey-haired woman. She’s wearing a bobbly oatmeal coloured sweater that looks like something Aziraphale would own but never wear in front of Crowley out of sheer embarrassment, which says a lot about how hideous it is. She has bifocal glasses perched on her nose and she’s holding a steaming cup of tea.

“Hello my dear,” the Almighty says. “Care to join me?”

In front of her there’s a little concrete table, which is a fucking cherub holding up a tray. Of course it is. There’s another teacup and saucer sitting there.

What the hell, thinks Crowley. It’s been a long time since he’s heard Her voice. 

He sits beside the Creator on the bench seat and takes up his teacup.

“So. I’m dead then.” He’s trying for jovial but what comes out is decidedly not.

“No. You came close, it was touch and go, but if you want you can go right back on living.” She waves a hand lazily to her right and there’s suddenly a patch of the garden glowing more brightly than even the galactic arm overhead. A doorway.

“Or, you can stay here and have a rest.” She takes a sip from her tea. “It’s up to you.”

Crowley frowns. “If I nearly died- is Aziraphale-“ he can’t keep the panic from his voice. If Hastur and Gabriel have hurt him, he’ll rip them both open and make avant-grade sculptures out of their innards-

“He’s fine. Physically, anyway. He seems a bit shaken, emotionally.” God eyes Crowley over her glasses with a little smile.

“Right, good chat, I better get back before he does anything stupid,” Crowley goes to stand but God motions for him to sit back down.

“Don’t rush off dear, it’s been so long since we’ve had a chance to catch up.” 

“Yeah well, who’s fault is that?” Crowley snaps, but sits back down anyway. God just gives him one of her enigmatic little smiles.

“I knew you’d want to go back. I’m going to need you down there soon enough, when the revelation is at hand.”

Crowley takes a careful sip of his tea. Jasmine. Delicious. 

“So the great plan is still on, then?” He asks. He manages to keep his hand from shaking too badly.

“It’s never been off. All that before... that was just a rehearsal, of sorts. And you were right, what you said to your angel. The next time, the humans will be their own side. And they could use someone like you with them.”

There’s a pause and then Crowley’s true nature gets the better of him.

“But why? Why all this bollocks about the great plan? When you just have everything just how you like it by thinking it? What’s the point of being omnipresent and omniscient if you just... let everything play out in the most awful way possible?”

God’s reply is gentle. “Still questioning everything, I see. The ineffable plan wouldn’t be very ineffable if I let everyone in on the details.”

Crowley will not be placated. “Fuck the plan. Whatever it is, how can it  _ possibly _ be worth it? You know how they suffer! How  _ we _ suffer! Between the natural disasters and the fucking arseholes, it’s just wall-to-wall shagpile suffering down there! How can you justify that!?”

God’s expression never wavers. “Yes. The problem of evil... but you’d know about that better than I. Evil is your area of expertise.”

“But I’m not evil,” Crowley can admit it here, in this liminal space between worlds, not quite a dream, but not quite real either. “Not all the way through.”

God reaches out and pats his arm. It momentarily bathes him in perfect happiness, and Crowley is, despite himself, bereft when she removes her hand. “I know, dearest.”

“Then how come you left me to crawl in the dirt for 6000 years?” He hisses. 

God considers this for a moment. “Well, you’re here now, aren’t you?”

Crowley takes a deep breath. She hasn’t changed, and he has, but he’s still the trouble maker, the questioner, the sly voice offering up knowledge. 

“That! That’s fucking bullshit. Grit making oysters and all that rot. Pain isn’t noble, it’s just pain. It doesn’t make people better, it means they’re in pain. Dying kids, weeping mothers, broken hearts, wars, cancer, all that horror - those things aren’t a lesson. It’s just a fucking waste!” 

He wants to say more, he wants to lay it all at her feet, he wants to list the darkest darknesses of creation until he sees her weep with guilt. Not that she ever would. 

He calms down, forces himself. She could end him without even blinking. She almost did, once.

The garden is quiet again. They both drink some tea. Crowley can’t think of anything else to say that isn’t an accusation, and The Almighty has never been all that talkative.

Finally she sets her cup down and stands up. “Oh Crowley. You’ve never really been alone though, have you? And now, I think you should go. He’s waiting for you.”

Aziraphale. Crowley’s heart beats a little faster. In the glowing corner of the garden that might be a doorway, he can see a vaguely person-shaped form that is somehow a brightness within the bright.

“He loves you, you know,” God says.

Crowley laughs at that. “Yeah, and I’m sure it’s come as quite a shock to him. But I thought your lot didn’t approve of that sort of ... abomination.”

“Not everything  _ my lot  _ says of me is true, Crowley,” God rebukes him mildly. “There are endless ways to rejoice in my creation, and none of them are wrong, if they are manifestations of love.”

“So if... so if we... ever get it all sorted out... he won’t fall?” Crowley asks, fear catching him once again.

“Aziraphale will not fall,” God says in the sudden deep and endless voice of prophecy, like a thousand tongues of flame licking through all creation. “He will remain a being of pure celestial light until he has played his part in the end of all things.” 

“Err, are we talking about the same Aziraphale?” Crowley said. “Fussy, really into old books, never met a shade of beige he didn’t like?”

God turns her eyes to Crowley and he’s suddenly swallowed in their brightness.  _ Fuck, now I’m hallucinating in my hallucination _ , he thinks, knowing it is anything but. He can see a vast red sky, the sun like blood over plains of shattered things, bones and broken buildings. There are monsters there too, things that would frighten even the denizens of hell, and blood-smeared angels in their midst, their eyes like black holes, and he can hear screaming, and he knows that there are people down there, fighting some horrifying war.

And there is a figure there that he knows instantly, standing silhouetted against the sackcloth and ashes of the sky, one hand curled around the hilt of a flaming sword. His white hair is longer, he’s got a beard, which is very odd -  _ but kind of hot actually  _ \- and there’s something in the set of his shoulders that makes Crowley ache. 

The angel - his angel - at the end of the world. 

_ And where am I, _ he thinks, and he reaches out his hand, and sees his own hand take Aziraphale’s.  _ Here. I’m here. I’ll be with you. _

“Give him a reason to fight,” God says in that voice, a voice of of gravity waves, of the vast arches of time stretching across the universe. 

And then Crowley snaps back into the garden, and God gives a little normal human sigh.

Crowley shakes himself away from his awe and fear. She always was a show off.

“Right. The end. The big one.” He gives a hollow little laugh. “And when would that be, again?”

God laughs. “You know I can’t tell you that. All I can tell you is that you have some time. But you already know that it won’t be time enough. No one ever gets enough.”

Crowley sits and looks at the incomparable sky. He knows. Even if he had forever, it wouldn’t fill him up. He used to think he was uniquely broken in that, but then he spent six millennia among the humans and realized it was a common complaint. No one down there ever had enough. They were all just striving helplessly for something more. Wanting. Longing. 

There is one long last moment of quiet as the cosmos wheels overhead.

“Well, thanks for the tea,  _ Mother _ ,” Crowley finally says, rising to his feet and straightening his clothes. “I hope I don’t see you around.” 

And then he shoves his hands into his pockets and saunters off into the light.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the S M U T that they both deserve after all that nonsense. (Yes this is a content warning this is the explicit chapter.)
> 
> Thank you a thousand times over to NarumiKaiko for being an incredible beta. 
> 
> And thanks to the friends at the WPH who held my hand through the agony of writing this last chapter.

Crowley woke up. His first impression was of sunlight and flowers, and an awful taste in his mouth. 

He felt strange, stretched thin. Everything ached, especially his chest. He cast his mind back, and though it was jumbled and confused, he remembered. Aziraphale with a flaming sword. Again and again. A nightmare that lasted forever. Angel wings on fire, burning blue sulphur. Somewhere dark, and awful. The Mirror. Gabriel, falling.

_Oh fuck._

He put a hand to his chest and felt strange ridges, looked down and saw angry red scars from his collarbones to sternum, even more down the plane of his stomach. 

“That’s not good,” he said, and his voice sounded dusty and creaking, unused. 

Then again, he was alive.

He sat up. He was in a strange bed in a strange room, an overwhelmingly floral room, one which made him think of lavender sachets and crocheted clothes hangers. His wings were out, and he slid them away into the other dimension.

He pushed back the sheet and swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, swaying a little. He wasn’t even dressed, and he really didn’t feel like facing whatever was coming next in just his pants, but he felt too ... worn thin... to manage a clothing miracle. 

Instead, he opened the closet at the end of the bed and found it empty except for a satin bathrobe, light blue with a very pink floral border print. _Right,_ he thought, and wrapped it around himself with clumsy hands. _Where was Aziraphale?_

He knew then the angel was close, he could feel him with that internal sense, the jagged wire singing in his blood, _angel angel angel._

The door of the bedroom was open, so he walked on bare feet down a short hallway into a compact sitting room. More floral. There was a door through to a kitchen and Crowley walked in. 

There was Aziraphale, turning from the kitchen sink with an armful of flowers stuffed into an old milk bottle.

When the angel saw him, the bottle crashed from his hands to the ground. 

Easy to fix, that. Crowley leaned over the mess of flowers and glass shards, and with a wave of his hand it all flowed back up into Aziraphale’s hands and reformed into an old milk bottle crowded with hollyhocks and peonies. 

It left him feeling dizzy, and he steadied himself on the kitchen bench with one hand. With the other, he took the bottle and the flowers from the angel’s hands and put them on the island.

“Angel,” he said, his voice still rough. “All fixed. Look. Tickety boo.”

Then the angel’s hands were on him, one cupped around his jaw, the other on his arm and pulling him closer until Aziraphale was kissing him, desperately, his mouth open against Crowley’s. 

After a shocked fraction of a second he opened his own mouth, and Aziraphale’s tongue was inside. The angel tasted of pears and sunlight and Crowley was bereft when he pulled back ever so slightly, too far.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Aziraphale whispered. 

“I’m here,” Crowley said. “I’m ... I’m all right.”

He suspected that wasn’t the entire truth, but he didn’t want to interrogate it any further, not when the angel was pressing his face into his neck, his hands moving down Crowley’s back, the curve of his body pressed into Crowley’s angles. That was already far better than he’d thought it could be. He slid his fingers into Aziraphale’s hair and marvelled at the way it felt, at the way Aziraphale felt so soft and warm and _good._

He could have stayed there forever, but Aziraphale put his hands down on Crowley’s shoulders, and said, insistently, “I think we should sit down for a minute. There’s some things we need to talk about.”

Aziraphale pulled him down into the sofa in the sitting room, and Crowley only just stopped himself from sliding into his lap. This was desperately strange and new and his skin felt too tight and he wanted that feeling again of Aziraphale kissing him. 

“First of all,” Aziraphale was saying, and Crowley forced himself to focus on his words rather than the feeling of their laced fingers, “I drove the Bentley. But I was very careful!”

“You what - actually, never mind, I don’t care, it’s fine,” Crowley said, seeing something almost like anguish in Aziraphale’s expression. 

“I... I had to find you, and then I had to find somewhere safe for us after... and you wouldn’t wake up,” the angel said, his voice cracking. 

“How long?” 

“Six days,” Aziraphale said, as if admitting something shameful, but he kept his hands intertwined with Crowley’s. “And it took me almost a week to find you. Only I didn’t find you, actually, they told me where you were. It was a trap, of course. I looked for you, but ...” the angel shut his eyes. “All those times you rescued _me_ , and I ... couldn’t find you.”

“Well, you must have,” Crowley said. “Because we’re alive. So, ah, how did we get away from Gabriel after he-” he let go of Aziraphale’s hands long enough to make devil horns above his head, hoping to wring a smile out of Aziraphale, but the angel’s face was set in stone. 

“After he hurt you, I killed him.”

“You what?” Crowley said again.

“With the sword.” 

The sword. Crowley felt a sickeningly familiar clench of terror but he managed not to get up and scramble for the door. 

Aziraphale had seen him flinch, though.

“Crowley, what did they do to you?” His voice was low. “When I saw you, with Madame Tracy, you accused me of... hurting you.”

“You were really there at that time?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale didn’t say anything else, just looked at him, his eyes pale as sea glass. 

Crowley rubbed a hand over this face. He desperately wanted his sunglasses on for this, but stopped himself from miracling a pair into existence and settled instead for looking at a point over Aziraphale’s head.

_He kissed me. This is real._

“I don’t think you actually want to know,” he said, finally.

There was another stretch of silence between them. 

“No. Probably not. But you might tell me anyway.” 

Crowley steadied himself. “Don’t suppose there’s anything to drink in this horrible floral monstrosity? No. Well. Couple of centuries ago I came up with the idea of torturing humans by, well, forcing them to relive their lives. You know. All the humiliations, all the petty little shit. But Lucifer didn’t understand what was so awful about that. So he made the mirror twist everything, especially the good things.” He stopped and looked down at their hands, Aziraphale’s blunt fingers curled around his.

“So for me it was... All the time we had spent together, across the years. Except that you hated me because that’s what angels do, they hate demons. And you ... you _killed_ me, again and again.” 

Crowley could still see it, feel it, vivid, too bright, all wrong. The hate and the sword. Over and over. The taste of blood in his mouth. 

But this was the actual Aziraphale, he wasn’t a blank-eyed nightmare, he was himself, a little rumpled looking, his hair sticking up all over the place from Crowley’s hands, his eyes wide. 

He was real, and he’d kissed Crowley, and now they were holding hands, and Crowley wanted him as desperately as he ever had, because none of that had happened. 

And. And Aziraphale had killed a former archangel of heaven. To save him. 

“Crowley, you must know, I wouldn’t-” Aziraphale finally said, wretched.

“Shhh,” Crowley said. “I know. But the mirror makes a hell out of a person’s memories. It takes the best things, the most loved things, and twists them into nightmares. And you. You were- you are- the best of it. The best thing. I love you. So it used you.”

That was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever said. He thought for a moment that dying pierced on Gabriel’s claws might have been preferable.

He shut his eyes, unable to bear the force of Aziraphale’s gaze.

Then Aziraphale made a small, soft sound, in a way that was both sad and astonished, and pulled him closer. He couldn’t help himself now and crawled into the angel’s lap, and pressed himself up against him. 

“This is awful,” Aziraphale whispered.

“It wasn’t you. I knew that you wouldn’t hurt me. Not like that. And you’re not hurting me now. Very much not hurting.”

Aziraphale’s hands went to his face, and slipped back to push through his hair. 

“I should have asked, but kissing - you don’t mind it?”

“Stupid question, angel,” he said, and kissed Aziraphale the way he’d wanted to for millennia, hands around his face, hungrily open and wet and frankly almost disgustingly sloppy, but Aziraphale was making noises that suggested he didn’t mind it at all either. 

A part of Crowley was still astonished this was actually happening, Aziraphale’s eyes dark with lust, one hand roaming down Crowley’s back, another pushing along his bare thigh under the robe. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale’s voice was the most familiar thing in the world, but it was radically different now. “Can I... can I take you... to the bed? Is that too fast?”

Crowley would have laughed at how he said that, but Aziraphale’s face was agonized, as if Crowley might actually have said _no_.

“Bloody hell, of course it’s not,” he said, instead, and they somehow made it to the bedroom, kissing frantically down the short hallway. 

Crowley found himself sitting on the bed as Aziraphale slid the awful robe off his shoulders.

He pressed his mouth along Crowley’s collarbones and then along his neck, not quite biting, just grazing along Crowley’s sharp edges with his teeth.

Then he stepped back, undid his tie and dropped it thoughtlessly, which was perhaps even more shocking than the kissing, and Crowley had a brief moment where he thought this might be another hallucination... 

But the way Aziraphale’s hands trembled slightly at his own buttons made him sure. _Real._

“Here,” he said, and helped the angel out of the waistcoat, and his shirt, _and_ a _blessed_ undershirt of all things, pulling it off the human way until he could finally kiss Aziraphale’s skin, pressing his tongue against the expanse of his belly. 

It made Aziraphale shiver, and Crowley reached for his waistband, but Aziraphale shook his head and instead pushed him down on the bed firmly, but not unkindly.

“Please, let me touch you. I want to make you...” he trailed off, staring openly at Crowley in a way that undid him. 

“Ok,” he said instead, stupidly, and moved back so Aziraphale could kneel between his thighs and kiss him again. This time the angel moved down his jaw and his neck and then his chest, kissing over those awful scars with a terrible gentleness, before licking one of Crowley’s nipples. 

Crowley made an utterly involuntary noise, and Aziraphale lifted his head.

“Was that all right-”

“Yep, great, very good, top marks for that.”

Aziraphale gave a huff of a laugh and pressed his mouth back to Crowley’s skin. His hands stroked down Crowley’s ribs and then his sides, slow and soft, much more so than Crowley deserved, coming to rest on the waistband of his pants, where he was straining against the fabric, hard and aching. 

“May I-”

“Angel. Stop asking. The answer is yes, yes, whatever you want. It’s always been yes.”

Aziraphale looked at him steadily before pulling the boxers down, and Crowley stared back, marvelling at that bright head hovering over his belly, and then lower still. His mouth was on Crowley’s hipbone, his inner thigh, and finally on his cock, kissing and then drawing him a little clumsily into his mouth. 

Aziraphale’s tongue moved over him obscenely, one hand stroking his base, his other hand pressed into Crowley’s side, his grip growing harder as he took Crowley further into his mouth. 

“Angel,” Crowley ground out. 

Aziraphale made a humming sound, and Crowley wanted to dig his fingers into the angel’s hair, but instead he clutched at the sheets, biting his lip to try to slow down the inexorable. Aziraphale moved his head and did something with his tongue and Crowley managed to gasp out something unintelligible, a warning. The angel didn’t pull away, and Crowley fell apart with a desperate groan, coming hard in the angel’s mouth.

Aziraphale hummed something again and then pulled his head away.

“That was rather lovely,” he said, leaning back to look down at Crowley, his expression somewhere between smug and something else, something that made Crowley want to look away. It was too much. “You’re lovely.”

“Stop it,” Crowley said, trying to catch his breath. “You know I hate it when you talk rot.”

Aziraphale laughed at that, moving up the bed to kiss him on the mouth again. 

The angel still, bafflingly, had his trousers on, and Crowley fumbled with his waistband in frustration before miracling them away - not even minding the wave of dizziness - so he could feel Aziraphale’s skin against him, curl one leg around the angel’s thighs, grind against the hard press of the angel’s erection. 

It was so good he was half-hard again already.

“You’re the lovely one,” he muttered into Aziraphale’s neck. “But I never thought you would want, you know, this.” He cautiously stroked down Aziraphale’s side and then took him in his hand.

Aziraphale sucked in his breath with a soft gasp, and Crowley slid his hand up and down.

“I’ve rather given you the wrong impression then,” he said breathlessly as Crowley stroked him again, tightening his grip in response to the angel’s shudder. “I’ve always thought you had such clever hands. But I was rather hoping... that is, I’d quite like to be inside you.”

Crowley stilled his hand. “Yeah,” he said, his voice creaking. “Yeah. Ok.”

“Oh good,” Aziraphale said.

A dim part of Crowley thought that perhaps he should be trying harder to to be seductive, but he couldn’t manage to hold the thought, because Aziraphale was over him again, this time pressing his hands into his thighs, pushing them up and apart. 

He looked down at Crowley possessively, covetously. Crowley had seen that look when the angel had his hands on some battered old first edition, and now he was running his greedy hands all over Crowley in the way he’d seen him do over the pages of a misprint bible.

“Crowley,” he said, “I do have to tell you my knowledge of all this is rather more theoretical than practical.” 

“Doing fine so far,” Crowley said breathlessly as the angel’s fingers slid along his arse and felt the sudden slickness there, one fingertip rubbing gently around his rim. 

And then the angel was easing himself forward, entering Crowley excruciatingly slowly, frowning as though he was concentrating on some impossible problem, his fingers clutching into Crowley’s thighs.

Crowley couldn’t stop himself pushing back against the angel, to take as much of him as he could. It was _so good_ , because this was Aziraphale, so of course it was, as everything with Aziraphale seemed to be brighter than the rest of the world.

“Oh,” the angel said again. “Oh, this is _wonderful_. Crowley I had no idea you’d feel like this-”

Crowley tried to agree but what came out was a low groan. It was too much and not enough all at once, and Aziraphale seemed perfectly happy to continue moving far too slowly, pulling away with the same exquisite drag.

“Yes,” Crowley finally got out, “fuck, this is- angel, please,” not even sure what he was asking for, maybe for Aziraphale to go faster or harder or maybe to keep going at the same awful, maddening, incredible pace, but whatever he meant, Aziraphale took it as a sign to get one hand under Crowley’s arse and hike his hips up, and that slight shift of angle was incredible. 

Aziraphale began to move faster, and harder now, and Crowley was vaguely aware he was groaning utter nonsense. 

“Angel, I can’t believe this, you’re beautiful,” Crowley heard himself babble, his every muscle tensing, arching up off the mattress. “I’ve always wanted you, from that first- that first day.”

“I know, darling, I know,” Aziraphale gasped, and then caught one of Crowley’s wrists and drew it to his mouth and kissed the palm of his hand, shuddering as he came inside Crowley, and Crowley felt as if he was wrenched from his body to somewhere else, where he could feel the brush of feathers all over, and then the glittering freezing-heat of starlight over his skin, hydrogen and helium and photons and gravity waves. 

It was love, a nova of love, Aziraphale’s brightness shining through his own darknesses, cracking him open, an ecstasy of burning. 

He was back in his earthly corporation, with Aziraphale’s hand stroking him and he came again in a long rolling wave that seemed to go on and on, leaving him gasping against Aziraphale’s neck.

After, they just lay for a little while, Aziraphale solid and soft and heavy on top of him. It was dark, and Crowley had no idea how much time had passed. Finally Aziraphale rolled off of him slowly.

“Is it always like that?” He said, in a surprisingly ordinary voice. His face was flushed pink and Crowley thought he’d never been more lovely.

“Dunno, never been fucked by an angel before. I literally saw stars though. Pretty sure that’s not standard. We’ll have to try it again, see what happens.”

At that Aziraphale laughed properly. “Oh I rather hope so,” he said, softly. “Crowley. I should have said it so long ago. I love you.”

It wasn’t quite a flaming sword through the heart, but something like that.

  
  


The next day, they walked together in the garden. 

“This is a mess,” Crowley said, kneeling and giving a weed a look so intense it shrivelled and died instantly. “How did you find this place? Where are we?” He could, he thought, smell the sea somewhere close. 

“I’m not entirely sure. But it’s for sale, incidentally, and I was thinking,” Aziraphale clutched at his own hands anxiously, until Crowley reached up and took hold of his fingers. “Well I could buy it... and we could. Stay. Stay here? For a little while, at least.”

Crowley let go of his hands, and stood up to brush grass off his knees. He’d felt much better this morning, and had instantiated clothing for himself. He’d inspected the Bentley, and Aziraphale hadn’t put so much as a scratch on it. 

He’d also woken up wrapped around Aziraphale this morning and they’d made love again - by somebody, he was so _soppy_ for Aziraphale - and that had been spectacular, so he was in a reasonably good mood given everything. 

He hadn’t mentioned his chat with God, and they hadn’t really talked about what might be coming down the line from heaven or hell, although he hoped, and maybe even believed, they’d have a break for now.

Not enough time, he knew that. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would have to do.

“I’d like that,” he said, and reached out and pulled Aziraphale into another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is no longer a WIP.  
> This is also the longest fic I have attempted, so... here goes nothing.  
> I know angst isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I promise there’s a happy ending.  
> You can find me at [deeply-inessential](https://deeply-inessential.tumblr.com/) on tumblr and yell at me about putting everyone through hell.


End file.
